


Erebor Farm

by thismomentintime



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Everybody Lives, F/M, M/M, POV Bilbo Baggins, POV Kíli
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-04 09:19:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 27,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14017137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thismomentintime/pseuds/thismomentintime
Summary: Bilbo is a historian who doesn't leave his house much, until he meets the grumpy but somehow intriguing farmer Thorin. As he grows closer to the family living on this farm, he discovers bit by bit that underneath Thorin's difficult manners, a kind but broken man is hiding.Fíli and Kíli are worried about the future of Erebor Farm since a new, organic farm opened their doors, and both are determined to hate the two children of that farmer, who are new at their school. This resolution drastically falls apart when Kíli gets to know Tauriel, the foster daughter of their hated enemy, a little better.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy this farm AU, in which Thorin gets to wear overalls and Bofur is the biggest shipper in the world. There might even be some Fíli/Legolas bonding. Since English is not my first language (I'm actually Dutch), please point out any mistakes in the language that you can find, I won't find it rude but only appreciate it! Hope you'll like this fic :)

Bilbo Baggins was a man of habits. He was fond of his quiet, comfortable life in the village of Shire, where never anything weird happened and where the days had been following after each other for years as rustic waves in a clear lake: no unexpected events, many friendly people, and a beautiful surrounding nature. It was a place where he was able to concentrate perfectly on his historical researches. He owned a beautiful house in an outlying street of Shire, where he made in a neatly cleaned-up home-office his pile of historical books ever bigger and bigger. Publishing those books had not only obtained him a big name amongst historians, but also a lot of money, with which he had been able to design his house exactly the way he wanted it to be, and thus created a perfect sanctuary for himself. In this home he had lived for quite some years now, on his own and very happily. His daily routine hadn’t changed in years and although some people might say he lead a boring life, his own opinion was that he had nothing to complain about.

But on one day, after visiting a distant relative whom he hadn’t seen for far too long, he decided to do something differently for once. The plan in his mind was to stop by the local supermarket and then drive home, but when he saw a sign at the side of the road with on it the handwritten caption: “EREBOR – VEGETABLES, FRUIT & EGGS FOR SALE” he changed his mind and pulled into the narrow trackway to stop at Erebor farm. Bilbo almost never came to this side of the village, so he wasn’t familiar with the farm store, but thanks to the sign he’d suddenly gotten an appetite for groceries fresh from the land.

As soon as Bilbo stepped out of his car, he immediately decided that the muddy yard was far too dirty to his likings. Such a pity of his good shoes! He pulled his dark-red coat closer around his body, pulled a hand through his coppery blond curls and walked over the improvised parking lot to the shed, above which a sign just like the one beside the road was hung.  
A man of about forty, forty-five years, was the only person present in the shed, which was dark and rather messy and stuffed with crates full of all kinds of different fruits and vegetables. He was wearing a blue overalls and had long, curly black hair with some grey streaks in it. When Bilbo entered, he looked up for a moment and immediately focused on his work again, without greeting him.  
Bilbo didn’t feel at ease, but he did see that the food looked fresh and healthy. He picked up a basket at the door and filled it with pretty much everything that looked tasty. It wasn’t before he came at the checkout, when his gaze first crossed that of the farmer’s, whose eyes turned out to be strikingly blue but stood kind of glumly in his face. Beneath a short but full black beard, was a mouth with a fairly moody feature and his nose was long but symmetric.  
Without using any more words than needed, the farmer called the price; his voice was deep an had an almost enchanting tone to it.  
Bilbo felt himself getting nervous under the farmer’s intense gaze and let his money fall on the floor. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled while he stooped down and felt his cheeks grow red. Without looking the farmer in the eyes again, he took his change, grabbed his groceries, and left.  
As soon as he was safely back in his car, on his well-known way home, he wondered how a grumpy long-haired farmer could make him so nervous.

\-----

‘I’m curious at those new students,’ said Kíli to his brother. They were on their way to their village high school together, and a day ago both of them had been told that they would get a new student in their classes. One of them was a boy and the other a girl, but, what mattered a lot more to Fíli and Kíli, they were the children of the new farmer of Shire. This presently unknown man had bought and renovated an unoccupied farm at the edge of town. Right now, a stunning farmhouse in a modern style was standing there and the surrounding land had found its destiny of organic horti- and agriculture. Their mother and uncle, owners of the family business that had been calling the shots in Shire for generations, had to view this development with bad grace, and that had resulted into the two brothers hating the new family before they had ever met them.  
‘Curious?’ repeated Fíli mockingly. ‘I already know they’re idiots, they’re from an organic farm! I bet they come to school in cotton trousers and only eat lettuce.’  
Kíli laughed. ‘You don’t even know them yet. The girl might be extremely pretty.’  
Fíli raised an eyebrow at his younger brother. ‘Do you believe that? Uncle Thorin will definitely assassinate you if you even look at one of them.’  
That was probably true, thought Kíli to himself. The business of Erebor was everything to his uncle and every threat was approached with the biggest possible distrust.  
And then he saw her. He walked onto the schoolyard where she was standing next to her brother, looking around clearly ill at ease, and her fiery red hair waving over her shoulders and reaching her waist drew his attention as a blinding privet sun. His breath froze, exactly at the moment she turned around and seemed to look him right in the eyes for an instant. It didn’t take longer than a fraction of a second until she turned to her tall blond brother again and the moment was over.  
Kíli recovered himself as soon as he could and poked Fíli in his side.  
‘What?’  
He nodded at the spot where the two new students were standing. ‘Look who we have there,’ he mumbled.  
At his surprise, Fíli wasn’t nearly as impressed with the girl as he was. ‘See how arrogant they’re looking. They don’t suit in a village at all!’  
Kíli tried not to let anything show of the shock that had gone through him upon first seeing the girl, but kept his face neutral and didn’t contradict his older brother.  
‘Kíli, Fíli, listen what I just heard!’  
The brothers looked around and saw their best friend Ori walking towards them.  
‘Have you seen them already?’ he asked softly but excited as soon as he reached the boys. ‘The girl is in our class, Kíli. And guy in yours,’ he told with a look at Fíli.  
‘Oh, amazing,’ sighed Fíli, who rolled his eyes, but Kíli’s heart strangely jumped up upon hearing this news.  
The bell rang and the three of them walked into the small building, where Fíli went off to his science-class and Kíli and Ori walked on to English.

‘You have to admit that the new girl at least is a nice view,’ said Kíli in a low voice and as casual as he could while he dropped his black backpack on a table in the back of the room.  
Ori shrugged.  
Kíli grinned. Ori was his best friend, but sometimes he really didn’t understand that boy. He barely even looked at girls, his biggest hobby was reading books, and multiple times a day he was eligible for the award for biggest dork in the universe. Upon that, his appearance didn’t really help him as well: dim red hair, terribly cut and with too short bangs, a remarkably close distance between his eyes, and a not too intelligent look on his face. Without Kíli, he would probably have made a beloved victim for bullying. But Kíli barely left Ori’s side and although was a lot shorter than most guys his age, no one dared to provoke him for a fight. Especially because their very different characters, they made such a good duo: Kíli made Ori laugh and Ori often made Kíli pay attention in class. Kíli would be lost without Ori just as much as the other way around.  
And then there was Fíli: although he was one year higher, the trio wasn’t complete without him. In looks, Fíli and Kíli were opposites: Fíli was blond, blue-eyed, with the same large nose as their uncle and a growing beard, while Kíli’s shoulder-length hair was almost black, his eyes brown, and he didn’t have more than a few dark stubbles on his chin. Although Kíli was the youngest one, he was slightly taller than his brother – what meant that Fíli was extremely tiny. The fact that Fíli and Kíli had been inseparable since forever, seemed to make everyone assume that they were, despite their different appearances, exactly the same personality-wise. Kíli often wondered how easily everyone could overlook that he was a lot more extrovert than his brother and that his brother was a lot more responsible. Kíli got himself into trouble far more often than Fíli, what pretty much always stayed unnoticed because Fíli was the one who got him out of it, mostly not without taking part of the blame himself. And although Kíli mostly was the one who proposed wild or slightly stupid ideas, Fíli was never too boring to consent and happily join him.

Just as Kíli slumped down in his chair next to Ori to make himself comfortable for an hour in the early spring sun that was shining through the window, the new girl walked past him and again took his breath. She was tall and her pace had a striking kind of natural elegance.  
‘Good morning everyone, as you all know we are in the company of a new student today,’ started mister Oin in his usual bored tone when the girl had reached the front of the class. ‘This is Tauriel Greenleaf.’  
Some people giggled upon hearing that name and at the sight of Tauriel’s tense expression, Kíli immediately felt a kind of extreme urge to hit them. As if it was normal to call your children Fíli and Kíli! And did anyone ever make remarks about that?  
For the rest of the class, Kíli absentmindedly stared at Tauriel Greenleaf’s back, who was sitting all by herself at the front of the classroom. He couldn’t remember when he had ever seen hair as beautiful as hers.

As soon as the bell rang and everyone went on their way to the next class, he caught up with her. ‘Where do you have to go?’ he asked.  
She looked at him and he came to the awkward conclusion that he was almost a whole head smaller than her.  
‘I have math now.’  
‘Okay, that’s great, that means we can walk there together. Then at least you won’t get lost on your first day,’ he said with a wink. ‘I’m Kíli, by the way. Do you like it here?’  
She nodded. Now that he could finally see her face up close, he decided that she indeed was extremely pretty: a slender face with a pale skin and quite a broad mouth, a sharp nose and eyes that were a very special kind of green.  
‘You’re from that new organic farm, right?’  
Again, she nodded. ‘My father wanted a new challenge, that’s why he came here. There appears to be another farm in this town that does really good business, but we count on our organic formula. It’s new and hip, so it should draw attention immediately.’  
Kíli grinned. ‘I wouldn’t count on that. Nobody in Shire would renegade to some unknown enemy just like that.’  
She smiled warily and tucked her hair behind her ear, which turned out to be strikingly pointy. ‘An enemy! You sure know how to make it exciting.’  
‘Nothing wrong with a bit of competition, right? My mum and uncle can easily handle you guys, just wait for it.’  
For a moment, she fell silent. ‘Your mum and uncle?’ she asked in a surprised voice. ‘So you’re an Oakenshield?’  
‘Well, not really. Durin, to be precise. But I do live on Erebor Farm. And if you guys don’t run us into the ground I would very much like to take over the farm later.’ He said it with a teasing undertone in his voice, but couldn’t estimate whether his remark also befell that way to Tauriel.  
‘Oh,’ was her only reaction, while she looked away evidently uncomfortable.  
‘You’re walking past the classroom!’ he shouted at her from the doorway of the math-room when she walked on alone without noticing.  
She turned around and turned a little red. ‘Oh,’ she said again as she followed him inside. ‘Thanks.’  
But she took a seat somewhere else and a little bit disappointed, Kíli sat down next to Sigrid of Dale.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo meets the whole Durin family and of course there's always a lot of sibling-fighting

Bilbo Baggins couldn’t remember the last time he’d had such an amazing meal as last night. He made the resolution to never buy his vegetables, fruit and eggs in the supermarket from now on, but to always go to Erebor Farm, no matter how nervous that cranky farmer might make him. Good food was important to him and he wouldn’t let himself be chased away by some bad-tempered dude, he bravely told himself.

And thus he went to the farm again that afternoon.  
‘…new formula! We have to profile our – ‘ The woman, who had spoken in an intense voice, abruptly shut her mouth when Bilbo entered the store. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said, a bit stiffly.  
Bilbo mumbled a greeting and looked at the two farmers from the corner of his eyes. For some reason, he had gotten the impression that the farmer was alone, but apparently he had a wife. Although… She did look a lot like him: the same dark curls, long nose and sturdy physique. She could very well be his sister.  
Because of the soft tone in which they continued their conversation, Bilbo couldn’t understand what they were saying, but even muffled, their discussion sounded heated. He had the feeling that his presence wasn’t really appreciated and hastily filled his basket with everything he needed. Because he felt like they wanted him gone as soon as possible, he didn’t have much time to doubt about what he would take, which made his basket a lot fuller than he had planned.  
At the counter, he again didn’t dare to look at the grumpy farmer, but the woman greeted him heartily and that brought him a bit more at ease.  
‘Good afternoon! I don’t think I’ve seen you here before,’ she said cheerfully.  
‘That’s right,’ said Bilbo, relieved that the woman turned out to be much more hospitable than the man. ‘But I think you gained a new regular last week.’  
‘That’s lovely to hear. Did you just move here?’  
‘Oh, no, I’ve been living here for ages. But sometimes it’s good to break old habits. I’m deeply ashamed to admit that I always used to buy everything at the supermarket. Not very conscious of me, I know.’  
‘It’s never too late to change, sir,’ noted the woman with a smile on her face while she typed the prizes into the old-fashioned cash register. Meanwhile, the farmer assimilated him with a scornful look and his arms crossed, probably waiting impatiently until he would leave so that he could continue his conversation.  
Uncomfortable under that gaze, Bilbo paid as quickly as he could, without continuing his talk with the friendly woman, and hastily stuffed all his groceries into a bag. Usually, he always took the time to pile them up neatly in two bags, first the heavy things and then the light and vulnerable foods, so that nothing would damage and everything would get home in a good condition. Now he stuffed everything haphazardly into his biggest bag, praying that this unusual crudeness wouldn’t break his fresh eggs. He said the woman a friendly goodbye, but still didn’t dare to look at the man, let alone greet him. While he turned his back to the duo, it took him quite some effort to act like that one bag was easy to carry.

The muddy yard was large and the distance to his car was about ten, maybe fifteen, meters. Two boys just came walking onto the yard when Bilbo left the store, talking in loud voices.  
One of the boys roared with laughter and the other one gave him a punch on his arm.  
At that moment, Bilbo’s bag ripped and all his food tumbled into the mud. ‘Oh no!’ he cried out, too civilized to curse even at such a moment. With a blush of shame on his cheeks he stooped down to have a look at the damage, while the guffaw of one of the boys ringed in his ears. He piled up as much carrots and apples as he could carry in his arms, with a battered eggplant on top, but when he got up, everything slipped through his fingers again.  
‘Come, let me help you.’  
He looked up into the face of one of the boys. It immediately struck Bilbo that he had exactly the same pervasive blue eyes as the man in the store.  
‘My bag!’ Bilbo showed him the damage. ‘It’s ruined! And all the food…’  
‘It’s just some mud,’ said the boy realistically. ‘You have to wash farm-food before you use it anyway, so it’s no big deal.’  
Bilbo nodded, but wished that he was standing with his cart in the supermarket, where everything was clean and he had all the time in the world, after a friendly smile from the cashier, to calmly pack his bags so that they wouldn’t tear under the weight of the most idiotic forgotten vegetables that he had taken with him in an impulse without even knowing how to prepare them.  
‘I’ll get you a new bag from inside, give me a moment.’ The boy rushed to the store, where his accompanist was lingering in the doorway. ‘Don’t be such a dick,’ Bilbo heard him say in passing to the dark-haired boy who stood laughing quietly out of what was clearly pure malicious pleasure. The second boy followed him inside. In no time the blond boy stood outside again with a handful of plastic bags, but also after Bilbo had thanked him he stayed to help him pack everything again.  
‘I’ve never seen you around here before,’ he noted, ignoring Bilbo’s protests.  
_And you never will see me around here either,_ Bilbo thought to himself, but naturally he didn’t say that. ‘Do you live here?’ he asked the boy instead.  
‘Yes, do you see that building behind the shed? That’s our farmhouse. They’re actually two houses: my brother and I live at the front with our mother, and our uncle lives in the back half.’  
‘And your mother and uncle are the people running the store?’  
‘They take turns. If the store is open, one of them is mostly in the shed to sort all the groceries and keep everything neat and stuff, while the other works on the land. During harvest we often hire some people to help out and my brother and I also work when we have the time.’  
‘That sounds very nice,’ said Bilbo, while he closed his trunk.  
‘I wouldn’t romanticize it too much,’ said the boy honestly. ‘It always seems so cute, farm-life, but it’s a lot of hard work for your bread. Especially in years with a lot of frost, when there isn’t much harvest. And since the beginning of this week we have a concurrent that we actually can’t really have. It’s hard enough to compete with the supermarket chains.’  
‘Do you mean that new organic farm at the other side of town? I read something about that in the paper.’  
The boy nodded, a worried feature around his mouth.  
‘I just met your mother in the store and I really liked her. That’s important as well: customer relations. I’m sure that your regulars won’t transfer just like that.’ Bilbo tried not to think about the grumpy man, who was able to singlehandedly undo all of his sister’s customer relations with one of his many threatening gazes.  
‘We’ll see,’ said the boy pragmatically. ‘But with you we have a new regular, right?’  
Bilbo couldn’t bear to disappoint the hopeful glance in those blue eyes and nodded. ‘That’s for sure. I owe that to you, after helping me out like this.’  
‘No problem!’  
‘Thank you..’ He gave the boy an asking look.  
‘Fíli,’ he introduced himself.  
Bilbo took his hand and shook it while telling him his own name.

\-----

No matter how much Kíli loved his big brother, at times he really couldn’t stand him. In the bus on the way home from school, Fíli had told him all about how arrogant and irksome the new guy in his class was.  
‘And that name: Legolas! Who the hell calls their child Legolas?’  
As if they themselves had such normal names, Kíli thought to himself.  
‘How was the girl, by the way?’  
‘I think she’s pretty nice,’ Kíli had answered reluctantly.  
Fíli laughed, until he saw his brother’s serious face. ‘What? Are you kidding me?’  
Kíli shook his head. In the meantime, the bus had arrived and together they walked the short distance from the bus stop to their home. ‘She’s a little shy, but also kind of cute. And definitely not ugly, even you have to admit that.’  
‘Please tell me this is a joke.’  
‘She’s a pretty girl, that’s just a fact!’  
Fíli looked him pervasively in the eyes and then burst out laughing. ‘You like her!’ he exclaimed while they walked onto the yard.  
‘Of course not, I’m just stating the facts!’ said Kíli quickly, but he felt his cheeks burning.  
Fíli didn’t stop laughing. ‘You do like her!’ he repeated.  
But as soon as Kíli was the one laughing, because the man who was crossing the yard from the store to his car let all his groceries fall across the yard like he had walked straight out of a Mister Bean-scene, Fíli suddenly became all serious and rushed to be the hero

‘Keep going like this and you’ll chase away all our customers,’ he told Kíli authoratively when he came back inside after helping the clumsy man. ‘We can’t really use that right now.’  
Kíli shrugged lightheartedly and took a bite from an apple he fetched from the shelves. ‘The whole town knows us. They like us and they like coming here. Why on earth would they go to some weird organic farm run by an arrogant guy from the city?’  
His brother gave him a pissed off look. ‘Just wait for it. Organic is hip.’  
‘In cities, yes. Right here, being normal is crazy enough.’  
‘That organic farmer isn’t just a farmer, he’s a businessman! He knows very well what he’s doing and if we don’t go all lengths for our customers, we will lose them all! We must have something to offer them, and if you laugh at them from the doorway without lifting a finger, we have nothing to offer them! I thought you wanted to take over the farm later as well?!’  
Yes, this was definitely one of those moments when he couldn’t stand his brother. ‘Jesus, Fíli, calm down. It’s gonna be okay,’ he said, carefree.  
‘Not with that attitude, no doubt about that. And can you please stop eating our money all the time?’  
‘I can grab an apple if I’m hungry!’  
‘Not from the shelves! Those apples are selected and administrated and if you pick one without paying or crossing it off, the administration is incorrect!’  
Just when Kíli wanted to give him a snark back, their mother came walking from the magazine into the store. ‘Kíli, did you cross off that apple?’ she asked strictly.  
‘Sorry mum, he got it from me,’ Fíli said before he could say anything himself.  
Kíli raised his eyebrows, but said nothing and watched how Fíli took the list and neatly placed a cross in the right column.  
‘Have you already met those organic people?’  
Both boys nodded.  
‘The eldest is in Fíli’s class and the youngest in mine,’ told Kíli.  
‘And?’  
‘She’s – ‘  
‘They don’t fit into a village at all,’ Fíli interrupted him before he could say that Tauriel seemed like a sweet girl to him. ‘And both of them didn’t try to have any contact with others, they only talked with each other. I found them kind of weird.’  
That made their mother look satisfied.  
‘How were things here?’ Fíli informed. ‘Did you already notice anything different?’  
‘A lot less customers than usually,’ their mother admitted. ‘But that makes sense. That organic farm is new. People want to have a look. Hopefully they’ve seen it after one week and come back to us the next. But this is definitely gonna be a bad week, we’ll have to be realistic about that.’  
‘Only this week, mum,’ Kíli tried to reassure her. ‘Seriously, there’s nothing to worry about.’  
‘I’m still trying to convince your uncle that we have to stand out more, but he still doesn’t wanna hear about that,’ told Dís. ‘I’m afraid we’re not gonna make it if we don’t up our game. We’re not cool enough.’  
‘We live in a village! Villagers don’t care about that; what kind of rubbish is that, being cool while _grocery shopping?’_  
Kíli’s mother uttered a tense laugh. ‘You sound just like uncle Thorin,’ she remarked.  
‘It’s gonna be fine, mum, I’m serious,’ said Kíli with emphasis. ‘We’ll be fine.’ As long as his uncle trusted on that, he refused to let his brother and mum get into his head. There was no one he trusted more than his uncle.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bofur is here and he's ready to start shipping!!

On Wednesdays, Bilbo’s best friend Bofur always came over for dinner. It had been that way for years and for that reason Bilbo also had the same habit for years to stop working on Wednesdays earlier to make his house look impeccable so that he could welcome Bofur into a spotless dining room. Not that Bofur cared much about that, but the thought of having someone over when the place was a mess, made Bilbo feel distressed. After cleaning up, he always started cooking an extensive meal around five o’clock. Just as the idea of having a guest in a dirty house, the idea of presenting a guest a simple, quickly prepared meal gave him the creeps.

This Wednesday, it was almost half past six when Bofur let himself in.  
‘Something here smells amazing,’ he said as he stepped into the kitchen.  
‘It’s almost done,’ said Bilbo, proud of his good timing. ‘I made carrots with salsifies.’  
‘Salsifies?’ Bofur repeated full of confusion. ‘Do you have some weird project again? When did people eat this?’  
‘It actually has nothing to do with my research this time. Do you know that farm store just out of town? Just under the mountain?’  
‘Yes, I drive past that place everyday on my way to work. Have _you_ been there?’ Bofur asked surprised.  
Bilbo nodded. ‘They have all kinds of vegetables I’ve never cooked before.’  
‘Um, Bilbo, you know I think you’re an excellent cook, but something called _salsifies_ doesn’t sound like anything that in any way can be tasty.’  
Bilbo laughed. ‘Wait for it. Have you ever left this house with an unsatisfied stomach?’  
‘How about that time you made that Roman fish sauce?’ Bofur suggested. ‘I’ve been sick for almost a whole week.’  
‘Only because we’re not used to that anymore nowadays!’  
‘It was made of rotten fish.’  
‘That was normal back then! And this is something entirely different; these are fresh vegetables, trust me.’  
Bofur uttered a small cough. ‘I don’t believe I have a choice.’  
It didn’t take long before he took back his doubting words. ‘It’s amazing, Bilbo! Can you get me the recipe?’  
‘Yes, of course. But I don’t think you can find this stuff in the supermarket.’  
‘Then I’ll have to pay a visit to that farm you’re suddenly a fan of as well,’ said Bofur.  
‘I got to warn you for the farmer, though. That man is quite…’ Bilbo fell silent and thought about how best to describe the farmer.  
‘Sexy?’  
‘What?’  
‘Wasn’t that the word you were looking for?’  
‘Bofur, no! He’s… I wanted to say that he… that he… he’s intimidating. And bad-tempered. And a little bit scary.’  
Bofur grinned at him in a way that Bilbo didn’t like at all. ‘Then why are you blushing?’  
Bilbo sighed deeply. ‘I thought you were better at reading me. That farmer gives me the creeps.’  
‘That sounds like you’re in love,’ said Bofur with an inauspicious grin on his face and twinkling eyes.  
Bilbo shook his head; every now and then it was impossible to talk some sense into his best friend. ‘You’re out of your mind,’ he said half laughingly.  
‘You do make me curious at that dude.’  
‘The woman is much nicer,’ Bilbo quickly said to avoid thinking about the threatening blue-eyed gaze of the farmer.  
Bofur’s grin disappeared. ‘He has a wife?’  
‘No, the woman is his sister. I think so, at least.’ But before Bofur could distract him again, he continued: ‘She’s really friendly. And the whole atmosphere on that farm… It’s like stepping years back in time. I can appreciate that, of course. It’s amazingly old-fashioned. They cultivate little bits of everything. There aren’t many farms like that anymore. I think most of them disappeared already before the Industrial Revolution.’  
‘Oh no, here we go again.’  
Bilbo understood he had unconsciously started a history lesson again. It was a habit which Bofur tried to make him stop for years, but which had taken such root that it probably was an impossible endeavour. ‘Sorry,’ he quickly said.  
Bofur grinned. ‘No, do continue, please. I’ve always wanted to know more about farmlife before the Industrial Revolution. Let me get comfortable for it.’  
‘You’re a terrible person,’ laughed Bilbo while shaking his head.

\-----

Since that one conversation on Monday, Kíli hadn’t spoken to Tauriel again. It was not that she was avoiding him, they were just never in each other’s proximity and whenever she was within greeting-distance, Fíli was beside him and he didn’t dare to say anything. Sometimes their gazes crossed for a short moment and Kíli couldn’t help often staring at her from a distance, mostly without really being conscious of it, for example when she sat bended over her notebook in class or when she was standing in front of her locker in the hallway.

‘How are things with the customers on the farm?’ asked Ori in the second week after the Greenleaf family came to town, when the three of them were sitting at one of the wooden tables in the cafeteria together.  
Fíli’s cheerful face immediately turned into an earnest, worried frown. ‘Mum had hoped that after trying the other farm for a week, everyone would come back to us out of loyalty. But this week we still have a lot less visitors than usually.’  
‘Do you think it’ll stay that way?’ Ori asked.  
Fíli shrugged and sighed. ‘I just don’t understand what can be so fantastic about that other farm. What can they offer that we don’t have?’ he said, frustrated.  
That gave Kíli an idea. ‘We can go and see it for ourselves,’ he proposed with a flicker in his eyes.  
‘Don’t be such an idiot, Kíli! They’re the enemy!’ Fíli fiercely exclaimed.  
‘That’s my point. We got to know what we’re up against, don’t we? It’s about time to spy there!’  
Fíli burst out laughing. ‘To spy, seriously?’  
Kíli began to get irritated. ‘Yes, seriously! You’re the one who keeps saying I don’t take this competition seriously enough. Well, at least I have a plan to do something!’  
‘I think it’s a good idea,’ said Ori, nodding.  
‘We can’t just barge in there.’  
‘We can if we buy something. No, listen,’ said Kíli hastily when his brother opened his mouth to protest. ‘Right now, that farmer doesn’t know who we are yet. We buy something, once. Then we know how their food tastes, we have an excuse to stroll around there for a bit and to search for their weaknesses, _and_ we get to see how they treat their clients.’  
‘Good idea,’ Ori seconded him again.  
‘I can’t believe I’m saying this: alright, then,’ Fíli consented with a sigh. ‘It does sound like a better plan than watching mum worry so much that it’s gonna be her death soon.’  
Kíli nodded, contented.

On that same afternoon after school, they took the bus to the other side of town, together with Ori. In contrast to the quiet, remote surroundings of Erebor Farm, the large building that was the organic farm stood just beside the thoroughfare where all traffic from and to the village drove over. The fields surrounding it were spacious and Kíli hoped, against better judgement, that not all this land belonged to the same farm. The building’s frontage was decorated with large, well-rounded letters. _Mirkwood Farm,_ they spelled out.  
‘What a bunch of hecklers,’ Fíli scoffed.  
‘It does look kind of nice,’ Ori unwillingly admitted, what obtained him two furious looks from the Durin brothers.  
‘It looks ridiculous,’ said Kíli full of loathing.  
‘So modern!’ Fíli cried out. ‘Farms should be authentic, create an atmosphere of old-fashioned coziness… This might as well be a factory! They don’t even have a yard, only a parking lot, as if they’re a supermarket!’  
‘Probably a good way to compete with a…’ But Ori didn’t dare to pronounce the word “supermarket” when he almost got himself killed by the hateful looks of his friends.

Confidently, Fíli preceded the other two guys over the concrete parking lot and through the automatic doors into the store. The room they entered was light and broad, with all kinds of fruits and vegetables exhibited in fancy boxes which reminded Kíli of vitrines and formed a stark contrast with their own dark blue crates placed on self-built shelves. Next to every product were handwritten signs with in graceful letters the species and price of the product and piles of leaflets with recipes and cooking tips beside it. In one corner of the store, an electrical fountain was gurgling and on the wall above the checkout hung a framed painting of some ugly still life of a fruit bowl. All around the room were windows in the high walls, which made the store look lighter and created the feeling of extra spaciousness.  
Ori whistled between his teeth.  
‘I think I’m gonna throw up,’ Kíli mumbled to Fíli under his breath, who nodded.  
‘Okay, let’s take just a few things. Only to test the quality,’ he ordered Kíli and Ori softly.  
After they had gathered some apples, a bunch of grapes and a bag of green beans, they went to the checkout, where a man emerged from the door to the back before they would have to wait.   
The man was an intimidating appearance: very tall, with a pale skin and long, smooth blond hair. From beneath his heavy eyebrows, he absorbed them with a cool, gray-eyed gaze and the smile around his lips, which should probably be welcoming, seemed rather arrogant, or at least mocking. ‘Good afternoon,’ he greeted the boys with a voice Kíli couldn’t describe as anything other than cold. ‘Have you found everything you needed?’  
‘Yes,’ answered Fíli, who didn’t let himself get intimidated as easily as Kíli or Ori. ‘Don’t you sell dairy? Or eggs?’  
‘No, we consciously chose to do only fruit and vegetables. On top of that, we bake our own breads, which you can find over there.’ The man pointed at the corner beside the fountain. ‘We are of the opinion that it’s not right to keep animals, so everything we sell here is vegan. We hope to be able to offer a broad assortment of nuts as well from next month onwards.’  
‘Ah.’  
‘Nuts are excellent meat- and dairy substitutes, you know. As soon as we sell them here, you can come to us for a complete, healthy and balanced diet that is good for both the planet and the animals living on it. Do you want a leaflet about it?’  
‘No, thank you.’  
‘Yes, please!’ said Kíli quickly, with a warning look at his brother. They were here to gather as much information as they could, after all. He took the leaflet from the man and let Fíli pay for their food. After that, he greeted mister Greenleaf as polite as he could and followed Fíli and Ori outside.

‘Kíli! What are you doing here?’  
Unexpected, he looked right into Tauriel’s beautiful face.  
‘Nothing!’ he exclaimed. He felt like he got caught for doing something bad. ‘I mean, shopping, what else. What are _you_ doing here?’ he added accusatory.  
Tauriel stared at him. ‘I live here,’ she said.  
‘Oh. Yes. Of course. Your dad is kind of um… Scary.’  
Almost, it looked like she was going to laugh, but it only took one short moment before she let the cold, distant look she had apparently learned from her father, return to her face. ‘You came to check out the competition, didn’t you?’ she asked.  
Kíli could only look at her sheepishly. ‘Please don’t tell your father. We were just curious – our parents didn’t send us, they don’t even know that we’re here!’  
On the other side of the parking lot, Fíli and Ori stood waiting for him, Fíli with an exceptionally impatient look on his face.  
Tauriel didn’t react to his words. ‘I have to go inside,’ she said instead. Without a goodbye, she turned away and disappeared around the corner of the building.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thorin attempts to make small talk with customers. Naturally, he isn't very good at it.

‘What are you going to make with this?’  
Bilbo wasn’t sure if the grumpy farmer was really trying to have some small talk with him now. ‘Sorry?’ he asked, taken aback, before he could stop himself.  
‘The purslane. We don’t sell much of them, barely anyone knows how to prepare a tasty meal with that.’  
His deep voice made Bilbo nervous, now that he finally heard him form a full sentence. ‘Um… I um… I don’t know yet,’ he stammered. ‘I thought it would be fun. To try something with it.’  
‘Try stir frying, I like them best that way. Although it’s also good to combine with sweet potatoes, I see you took some of them as well. And purslane-soup always works well too; that’s very easy to make and still nutritious.’  
‘Thank you,’ said Bilbo reluctantly. He wanted to ask the man whether he liked cooking, but thinking back to how their first conversation had gone, he didn’t dare to. However, the silence that stretched out while the farmer was pressing the keys on the cash register, felt even more uncomfortable so at last Bilbo began: ‘Are you – ‘  
And then the door opened and a second customer entered. Bilbo immediately swallowed the rest of his question and the farmer shifted his pressing eyes back to the screen, as if he hadn’t heard his customer just starting a question.  
‘Hey, Bifur!’ he greeted the newcomer instead, more heartily than he’d ever greeted Bilbo. ‘Twenty-two thirty,’ he said to Bilbo.  
While Bilbo looked inside his wallet, a very soft ‘Please’ sounded. Bilbo looked up but the farmer didn’t look at him and he wondered if he had imagined it.  
When he took his change, their hands rubbed against each other for a moment and the farmer’s big hand felt just like it suited a farmer: rugged and calloused. Bilbo caught a glimpse of earth beneath his short nails before he averted his gaze.

Just as he drove upon the road home, he realized that he had forgotten to take some new cheese with him. He stopped the car at the side of the road to check it and came to the conclusion that there indeed was no cheese in his bag. He thought about his usual slice of bread with cheese for breakfast and saw the empty space in the fridge very clearly in his mind’s eye. He was conflicted: should he skip his beloved morning-habit for a whole week or should he undergo the awkwardness of walking back into that store again? At last, his habit won – of course – and he turned the car. 

The customer who had entered the store when Bilbo was paying, just came outside again and there weren’t any new cars in the parking lot.  
‘Again?’ asked the farmer curtly when Bilbo stepped inside for the second time.  
‘Sorry, I forgot something,’ he sheepishly explained. It didn’t take long before he found what he was looking for and was back at the counter.  
‘Did you want to ask me something? Before that other customer came in just yet?’  
Bilbo had hoped to get away without having an uncomfortable conversation this time, but it seemed like he wouldn’t be able to bail out of that. ‘Um…’ He acted like he had to think about it for a moment. ‘I think… Oh, yes! I was wondering if you’re a good cook. Because of those tips. For the purslane.’ Bilbo stared at the cheese on the counter between them to avoid the farmer’s eyes, that still made him nervous.  
‘Not great,’ answered the farmer. ‘Dís is a whole lot better. She practically lives next to me, so I often eat at her place. But I do know my way around the food I grow.’ That last bit sounded proud, almost arrogant.  
Bilbo nodded and paid for his cheese.  
‘I’ve never seen you in town before,’ the man noticed, just when Bilbo thought the conversation was over.  
‘I’m home a lot,’ Bilbo admitted. ‘I work from home. So I don’t really need to be in town much.’  
‘That’s the same for me,’ said the man. He sounded almost friendly now and that made Bilbo so nervous that he almost wished he would get as grumpy and unfriendly as earlier – he had just gotten used to that.  
‘What kind of work do you do?’  
Bilbo coughed shortly. ‘I’m a historian.’  
‘Historian. Well, well.’  
The same slightly embarrassed feeling that Bilbo had more often whenever he talked about his profession with practitioners, came over him: that he made a lot more money than this farmer did, while this farmer literally made sure people could eat and Bilbo didn’t immediately contribute anything useful to society with the weird passion he had been lucky enough to turn into his job. It gave him the feeling that he was living on a bed of roses and that the man in front of him justifiably looked down on him.  
‘Interesting,’ the man finally said, but Bilbo doubted if he really meant that. Probably not.  
Bilbo nodded. ‘I write lots of books. For my researches. Literary researches – that’s why I can work from home.’  
The farmer nodded but turned out not to be interested in the kind of research that Bilbo did or the subjects that consumed him.  
Bilbo had the feeling that it was weird to just walk away, but didn’t really know what more he could say. ‘Thanks for the cheese,’ he said, lastly, after which he immediately realized how dumb that was, since he was the one who paid for the cheese. Before the farmer could see how a blush spread over his cheeks, he rushed out of the store.

\-----

When Fíli and Kíli together entered the store, where their uncle was standing behind the counter, they saw a customer they had never seen before. The man had a remarkable moustache and a quite ridiculous hat on his head, but gave the boys a friendly nod when he passed them on his way to the exit.  
‘And? Had some more clientele today?’ Fíli informed as soon as the door closed behind them and the store turned out to be empty.  
Uncle Thorin uttered a deep sigh. ‘I’m afraid not.’  
‘Mum is right: we have to work on our image,’ said Kíli.  
Thorin raised a mocking eyebrow. ‘What do you think I’m doing? I made small talk with three customers today!’  
Kíli burst out laughing and beside him, his brother could hardly keep a straight face either. He tried to imagine what small talk with Thorin Oakenshield would look like but for some reason it seemed just as terrifying as it sounded when their uncle spoke those words.  
‘Three already,’ said Fíl dryly.  
‘Not everyone is that approachable!’ Thorin defended himself.  
‘Uncle Thorin, if your new tactic is to make small talk with three of the sixty customers that come in on a day, then – ‘  
‘Thirty-seven.’  
‘What?’  
‘Yesterday we had thirty-seven customers. And today, we’re at – ‘ Thorin looked at the papers behind the counter, ‘twenty-four, until now. Hopefully there’ll be another fifteen in rush-hour between work- and dinnertime, but we definitely won’t get to forty.’  
Fíli looked defeated and even Kíli started to see the earnestness of the situation now that they had seen the fancy organic store with their own eyes. He started feeling guilty about buying food over there.  
Fíli quickly recovered. ‘Okay, if we can’t get to forty customers a day, we really have to go for another approach,’ he fanatically said. ‘This just doesn’t work anymore. The competition is out there, we _must_ change our game.’  
‘I am not going to do more company-supply!’ said Thorin with rumbling voice. ‘Our versatility is our strength, it has been that way for generations and I’m not gonna change that! The parts we deliver to companies are nice to get by with, but it’s not how Erebor – ‘  
‘Listen to what you are saying! Our versatility is our strength,’ Fíli repeated. ‘Let’s use that to our advantage.’  
Thorin crossed his arms and looked at his nephews threateningly.  
‘We went to Mirkwood,’ Kíli blurted out.  
‘Kíli,’ said Thorin in a voice that almost made him more afraid than that one time when he had singlehandedly made the whole year’s pear-harvest go to waste because he hadn’t secured the storm nets correctly before the predicted nightly hailstorms.  
‘It was my idea,’ Fíli lied upon seeing his brother’s guilt-stricken face.  
Thorin closed his eyes and slowly and deeply breathed out.  
‘We just wanted to see what we’re up against. And seriously, we have to step up our game!’ Kíli exclaimed. ‘Fíli is right, our versatility is our strength. Those organic people, they only do vegan rubbish! We have much more to offer: cheese, milk, eggs… We could keep bees and sell honey, we could add meat to our shelves instead of selling all our chickens to butchers, we could keep sheep and sell wool…’  
‘Those are investments we can’t afford,’ said Thorin curtly.  
Kíli exchanged a look with his brother.  
‘Uncle Thorin,’ said Fíli, surprisingly hesitant. ‘You’ve been teaching me for two years now to eventually take over the financial part of this company. We do have enough savings. This is an investment worth making. Otherwise, there won’t be any Erebor left to invest in.’  
‘It’s a risk,’ said Thorin, stubborn as always. ‘Besides, you are trying to distract me from the real issue: that you two have barged into Mirkwood without running it by us first!’  
‘We only wanted to help!’ said Kíli, almost begging. ‘Please don’t be mad at us.’  
‘It was stupid, you’re right about that,’ Fíli added.  
Thorin’s gaze softened. No matter how harsh he might seem at times, he had always had a huge soft spot for his nephews. ‘I suppose it’s your mother’s job to punish you anyway,’ he grimly said. ‘But you’ll have to tell her yourself.’ Something resembling a smile hid beneath his beard.  
Kíli exchanged a look with his brother and saw that Fíli, too, understood that that was Thorin’s way of saying he would keep his mouth shut to Dís.  
‘Thanks.’ Fíli gave Thorin a big hug, and Thorin stretched out his arm to pull Kíli into the embrace as well.  
‘And do take your time to consider those investments. In the end, you’re still the boss.’  
‘For now,’ Thorin teasingly said.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bofur is all of us and Tauriel and Kíli aren't exactly doing great. (plus some background on Bilbo!)

‘He _is_ sexy, you liar!’  
Bilbo had to keep the phone about a meter away from his ear, almost dropping it, when he heard Bofur’s screaming at the other side of the line.  
‘What?’ he uttered, quite perplexed.  
‘That farmer is super sexy! I’ve been there and he is hot!’  
‘I’d rather keep it at intimidating.’  
‘That too, but in a sexy way!’ Bofur screamed, frustrated. ‘Are you really that blind?’  
Bilbo sniggered. ‘Why don’t you take him, if you like him so much?’  
‘Because I’m married. To a woman,’ Bofur reminded him dryly. ‘He’s perfect for you! Can I set you up?’  
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Bofur,’ Bilbo immediately said. ‘Have you even taken a good look at him? There’s no way that such a tough guy is into men. Besides, he’s incredibly rigid and grumpy and he looks at me like he’s angry all the time.’  
‘So you like him.’  
‘What? No, I literally just said that – ‘  
‘You only said why you think he won’t be into you, not why you’re not into him.’  
‘Yes, I did! Because he gives me the creeps!’  
‘Isn’t that a good thing?’  
‘No, Bofur, that’s not good at all! I think he’s an unpleasant man, alright?’ Yes, those eyes were intriguing and that hair was beautiful and his figure looked incredibly good underneath his overalls, but he would never admit that to Bofur: it would only add fuel to his fire. He could very well appreciate all those things – and of course that deep, almost hypnotising voice – from an aesthetic point of view without liking the man personally – let alone being into him.  
‘Okay,’ said Bofur, doubtful and clearly not convinced at all. ‘I just started shipping you guys,’ he added somewhat disappointed.  
Bilbo couldn’t help but laugh.  
‘No, I’m serious. You’ve been alone for such a long time now.’  
‘I like being alone, you know that!’  
‘Yes, of course, but… I’d just like it for you, to have someone. And you don’t really make it easier on yourself by being at home on your own so much and never meeting new people.’  
‘I like working from home. I truly do,’ said Bilbo. ‘Speaking of which: you’re keeping me from my work right now. Time to hang up and bother someone else with your free time.’  
Bofur obeyed and Bilbo could finally get back to his research.

His desk was swamped with untidy piles of books and he bowed over the fragile, battered manuscript that he had picked up from a museum two days ago. It had not been easy to get his hands on it and he was secretly extremely proud that he managed it. This could very well be a breakthrough in his search. The runes were written in a dialect he wasn’t particularly specialized in, but he was too happy with his manuscript to immediately call for help from a specialist and tried his very best to translate as much as he could by himself first.  
He saw the old cities he usually researched in his mind’s eye as hazy reflections of a now perished past. He knew it wouldn’t be too difficult to get those images razor sharp: he only needed to get on a plane and then he would be able to see these exhumations in all their perished glory, with his own two eyes. But that idea freaked him out. From the safety of his own house, he could let his imagination run free. With every step of his research, the cities were forming ever more concrete in his mind’s eye. Reality would never be as beautiful as the perfect pictures inside of his head, where the streets were crowded with people in strange traditional costumes and languages were spoken that Bilbo couldn’t even read, and the scent of exhaust fumes and flashes of cameras did not exist yet.  
No, the comfort of his own home, where he could sit in front of his computer and above his books with a cup of tea, was much too valuable for him. Anytime he caught himself secretly longing for the adventure of archaeology, he brought himself back in line by reminding himself of that. Such adventures weren’t meant for someone like him.

\-----

‘Kíli!’  
He turned around and saw, to his happy surprise, that Tauriel was the one who had called him. He looked at his brother, who was walking next to him on their way to the bus stop, and Fíli nodded.  
‘But keep it short, I don’t wanna miss the bus.’  
‘It’s only leaving in fifteen minutes,’ Kíli told him.  
‘Just hurry.’  
He ran back to the school building, where Tauriel was waiting for him. ‘Hey! How are you?’ he asked with a grin.  
‘What were you doing at our farm yesterday?’ She didn’t sound friendly at all and Kíli’s joy because she had wanted to talk with him immediately vanished.  
‘Alright, I’m sorry, I know it seemed weird,’ Kíli admitted. ‘We were just curious. If you want to, you can come with me to our farm as well!’  
She looked at him like he was out of his mind. ‘I’m serious, Kíli.’ The emphasis with which she pronounced his name did something weird with his stomach. ‘You can’t just barge into our store, you had no business being there. It’s disrespectful.’  
Kíli felt anger swell inside him. That she dared to talk down on him like that! ‘I don’t think you really understand how this works,’ he told her, irritated. ‘We were here first. Our store did good business. That farm – it’s my future! And my brother’s! Do you think he gives you those hateful looks all the time because this is just a friendly competition?’  
She said nothing and Kíli continued: ‘This isn’t some nice new challenge for us, the way it is for your father. It is our lives: our heritage _and_ our future are at stake here! You can think of it whatever you like, but I’m not gonna apologize for the fact that I’m trying to save our farm. That farm is everything we have.’  
Tauriel opened her mouth to say something, but Kíli didn’t want to hear it anymore and turned his back to her to catch up with his brother.

He wondered why he had to let himself be seduced by her pretty physique and intriguing face, by that unimportant, meaningless first impression he had gotten from her. He had gotten himself distracted by what actually mattered, he had seen it as a joke, as a game for which he could very well have a look into Tauriel’s home under the pretext of espionage.  
From now on, it had to be over. He had to get a handle on himself. Resolute, he shook the thought of Tauriel’s green eyes giving him that startled look from his mind.  
‘What did she want from you?’ Fíli asked when he arrived at the bus stop.  
‘To argue ,’ Kíli answered.  
‘Are you mad at her? I thought you liked her?’  
‘She’s the enemy,’ Kíli snarked at him.  
‘Weren’t you the one saying we shouldn’t let ourselves get carried away by that?’  
‘I never said that,’ he vehemently denied. ‘This is not just between our parents! We’re the ones to take over Erebor, this is between all of us. We have to protect Erebor.’  
Fíli stared at him, clearly flabbergasted by this sudden change. ‘Did she bully you because of your height or what?’ he joked.  
But Kíli couldn’t tell how much she had hurt him by first giving him the impression that she wanted to talk with him and subsequently rebuking him in such a painful manner, as if he were a little child. She couldn’t have showed any clearer how much she apparently looked down on him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally some much needed progress!

Bilbo was relieved to find only the female farmer in the store during his next visit to Erebor Farm. Bofur’s encouragements over the phone hadn’t exactly helped and the last few days he had spent way too much time appreciating the aesthetics of the farmer’s looks in his thoughts. He wondered whether it wouldn’t actually be good for him to see the farmer again, because that would remind him of the not particularly attractive personality of the man. He made himself believe that that was probably the reason for his disappointment when he encountered the woman in the store.  
‘Good afternoon, have you found everything?’ she kindly asked him when he came to the counter.  
Bilbo nodded. ‘Is your husband working on the land?’ he asked before he could stop himself; he just had to be sure what their relationship was.  
‘My brother,’ the woman corrected him and Bilbo noticed that he had been holding his breath in suspense of her answer.  
‘And both of you aren’t married?’ He hadn’t wanted to ask that question at all. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be intrusive,’ he added, embarrassed.  
But the woman kept smiling. ‘That’s okay. No, we’re both alone.’  
Bilbo wondered where the boys’ father would be, but had the feeling that he had already asked too much and didn’t dare to ask her any more questions about their private lives.  
‘And what about you? You’re here often, I suppose you don’t eat all that food by yourself!’  
‘No, I like cooking for friends.’  
‘Ah, of course. If you’re interested: I have some recipes here. They aren’t easy but if you like cooking that shouldn’t be a problem for you, and the results are all delicious. Both my sons love this casserole with spinach and corn.’  
Bilbo took the leaflet from her and promised that he would try some of the recipes soon. He left the store with a content feeling, but as soon as he came outside, he inadvertently felt disappointed because the robust figure of the farmer walking over the land was nowhere to be seen.

He was unable to restrain himself: the next day, after work, he again drove over the rural lanes in the direction of the farm. He had suddenly felt a great need to cook a big pan of tomato soup, and he didn’t think about that while making his shopping list the day before. He certainly did not do it because he was hoping to this time run into the farmer.

‘That’s a lot of tomatoes.’  
Bilbo had to put a lot of effort into not laughing at this awkward attempt at small talk and nodded, hoping he was able to keep a straight face. ‘Enough for a good pan of soup, I hope.’  
The silence that fell while the farmer weighed the tomatoes was heavy and Bilbo frantically searched for something to say.  
‘How’s business going?’  
‘Fine. Three sixty-five. Please.’  
He probably thought him nosy, thought Bilbo to himself while looking for a five-pound bill in silence.  
‘No, actually, it’s not fine at all,’ the farmer suddenly said. ‘We have to renew. My sister said it before, and I didn’t want to hear about it, but now the boys are saying it too. My nephews, I mean. They want to take over the farm, later. My sister’s advice is something I can ignore, but they… I can’t mess this up for them. They have already lost so much, I cannot be the person who made them lose this future as well.’  
Bilbo was completely taken aback by this sudden confession.  
‘Your change.’  
Now he probably seemed like a rude, insensitive dick, because he said nothing after the farmer shared with him what was possibly his biggest fear. Bilbo cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry. Why exactly is it you don’t want to renew?’  
‘Because we’ve been doing for generations what we’re good at. I like that certainty, I know that it works.’  
‘Sometimes, it’s good to take risks,’ said Bilbo. ‘Small ones. I, too, am quite fond of my certainty, but if I had forcedly held onto that, I would have never walked into this store and then, I would have never been making the best tomato soup ever tomorrow.’  
The man didn’t laugh about this bad comparison and Bilbo’s faint smile vanished.  
‘What I’m trying to say, is that change can be good, sometimes. With emphasis on sometimes. Like now. Every single one of your products is of outstanding quality, so I’m convinced that your customers will be back in no time if you’ll indeed renew a little.’  
Something in the farmer’s gaze seemed to grow softer. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be bothering you with my dreariness,’ he said.  
‘I don’t mind listening to your dreariness,’ Bilbo answered, surprised that he actually dared to say those words out loud. ‘I’m glad to share in your sorrow. But I won’t keep you from your work for too long. Thanks for the tomatoes, mister Erebor.’  
‘It’s Oakenshield,’ the farmer corrected him. ‘Or no, it’s Thorin.’ Upon seeing Bilbo’s confused, somewhat asking look, he added: ‘Thorin Oakenshield.’ Again, he paused, and at last he said: ‘You can say Thorin, master…?’  
‘Um… Baggins. Bilbo Baggins,’ Bilbo stammered.  
Thorin Oakenshield nodded. That intense gaze of his made Bilbo freeze in his spot and forget that he was supposed to leave the store now.  
‘Are you – ‘  
Bilbo would never find out what it was that mister Oakenshield wanted to know about him so bad, because at that moment the door got opened by his two nephews, who came clomping inside with a sharp blow of wind while bickering loudly. Barely hearing what the boys were talking about, he suddenly knew how to avert his gaze from those hypnotizing eyes and he left the store as quickly as he could, after stammering a goodbye to the farmer, which didn’t get returned.

\-----

Every time he passed Tauriel in the hallway or was standing in her proximity while waiting in line outside of the classroom, Kíli gave her a dirty look. And every time that happened, Tauriel looked down at the floor, as if she was hurt. But Kíli kept reminding himself that she deserved it. Because of her and that arrogant vegan father of hers, his whole family was constantly worrying about their future and how they would ever be able to keep paying their bills.  
‘Kíli!’  
This time, he recognized her call before he had to turn around, but he pretended like he didn’t hear her and was busy looking for something in his locker, although it was almost empty.  
‘Kíli, will you please listen to me?’  
‘What?’ he said in a hostile tone while brusquely turning around and staring right into her green eyes.  
‘I’m sorry.’  
‘What did you just say?’ He wondered if he really heard it correctly.  
‘I’m sorry. That things are going so bad with your company. I mean… Strictly spoken that’s not my fault, of course, but I can’t help feeling a bit responsible. And I’m genuinely sorry for you.’ She took a deep breath and Kíli saw her hands nervously fumbling at the bottom of her green jumper. ‘I’m just a girl who moved here and is trying to survive at her new school. I’m not some bad guy who wants to see you suffer. I get that you’re mad at my fath- at my foster father, but please don’t take that out on me. That’s not fair.’  
Her foster father. That smug organic farmer was het foster father. All the resemblances which Kíli thought to have seen between them, disappeared right on the spot: her arrogant smirk became a sweet but somewhat insecure smile, her spotless pale skin became a freckle-covered canvas, her long limbs became elegant and feminine, and the cold look in her eyes became one of tense awaiting.   
‘If I could, I would help your farm to survive,’ she said when he still said nothing. ‘You were one of the few people at this school who even looked at me. You probably didn’t even realize how important that was to me.’  
Kíli started grinning like an idiot and felt a wave of warmth spread from his chest to his stomach upon hearing those words. But of course, he wasn’t able to give a serious, just as sweet reply. ‘Of course you can help our farm,’ he said, mischievous. ‘Chase all your customers away. Be such an awful person to them that they’ll all come running back to Erebor.’  
‘I don’t think I can do that,’ she said, hesitant, as if she didn’t really know if he was joking or not.  
No, of course she couldn’t do that. She was far too sweet for that. Even if she wanted it, she wouldn’t be able to pull it off.  
‘Then I’m afraid we can no longer talk,’ he said with a straight face.  
Tauriel looked so disappointed that he couldn’t bear gulling her any longer.  
‘Or we can. But my parents would be furious if they knew we were friends. My brother as well. And your foster father too, I guess.’  
She nodded.  
‘Then, we only have one option.’  
‘Which is…?’ She tilted her head while looking down to him expectantly and the smouldering warmth in Kíli’s stomach turned into an enormous blaze.  
‘Lie to them, of course.’ He took some time to take a deep breath, preparing for the words he wanted to say. ‘Would you like to go and do something fun with me? In the city – not here in the village.’  
It seemed to take ages before she said something, and even then, she didn’t really answer his question. ‘Something fun?’ she repeated, reluctant.  
Kíli nodded.  
‘Like what?’  
‘Like a date.’ There, he said it. ‘The rest is a surprise,’ he added on a half mysterious, half nonchalant tone that hopefully hid how nervous he was.  
The most stunning smile that he had ever seen, spread over Tauriel’s beautiful face. ‘Yes, I would like that,’ she agreed, nodding. The surprised happiness in her voice was unmistakably.  
Kíli closed his locker behind him and walked backwards through the abandoned hallway. ‘I’ll let you know when it’s gonna happen.’ Trying to look as cool as possible, he pulled a hand through his messy dark hair and then turned around.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thorin is not nearly as subtle as he thinks he is (Dís knows, of course, and Bilbo is completely oblivious, of course). AND KÍLI AND TAURIEL ARE GOING ON THEIR FIRST DATE!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was wondering what Tauriel would be like without a bow and a fight to win, and I felt like she would probably have some similarities with Ori. I hope you'll like this way of looking at her character! I know it's not the badass Tauriel we so often see, but I feel like there's a whole other side to her when she's not in some battle and I think that's why she and Kíli balance each other out so well. Please let me know what you think of it!

‘Who are you going to cook for this time?’  
Before Bilbo could answer that question, Thorin Oakenshield came clomping into the store from the back and stood next to his sister behind the counter. ‘Hey, Dís, do you know where – oh, hello Master Baggins. Dís, can you go look for the last crate of pears? I thought we had six of them. I’ll help Master Baggins here.’  
‘Thorin, I’m – ‘  
‘I really couldn’t find it, just have a look for me.’  
Somewhat confused, the woman looked back and forth between the two men and Thorin had to give her a little push before she went through the door to the back.  
‘What did I just catch there, you’re gonna cook for someone, Master Baggins?’  
‘Um, yes, I like cooking for friends.’  
‘Can you cook for us sometime?’ All of a sudden, one of Thorin Oakenshield’s nephews appeared from behind some shelves, where he had been out of Bilbo’s sight. ‘Mum has this phase again when she only does weird experiments. We haven’t had a decent, normal meal in two weeks, have we, uncle Thorin?’  
‘Can’t your uncle cook, then?’ Bilbo asked the dark-haired boy.  
‘Uncle Thorin can only microwave,’ he answered. He ignored his uncle, who indignantly opened his mouth, and added, with a devilish grin: ‘But maybe he _can_ help you not to drop all of your food when you’re cooking.’  
Oh no. Apparently the boy remembered him from that one time when he ripped his bag, that one time when he had been laughing at him full of malicious pleasure. A blush spread over Bilbo’s cheeks.  
‘Um… I – ‘  
‘Thorin, there are literally six crates in the same place,’ Dís saved Bilbo from his stammering when she came back from the storage. ‘Usually you’re never that chaotic. And Kíli, don’t be so mean to mister Baggins.’ With a radiant smile, she turned to Bilbo. ‘It hurts to hear that all of a sudden my cooking isn’t appreciated by my sons anymore, but I would very much like to invite you over for dinner sometime. Of course you won’t have to cook for us, then: you can judge for yourself if my creations are really as terrible as Kíli apparently thinks.’  
‘Dís, maybe Master Baggins doesn’t want to – ‘  
‘Of course he does, don’t you, mister Baggins?’ Dís interrupted her brother.  
Bilbo felt obliged to nod, with a head that felt just as red as the bell pepper on the counter. ‘That um…’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’d like that very much, Mrs. Oakenshield.’  
‘Durin. This guy is the only Oakenshield in here,’ said Dís while pointing her thumb to Thorin, who was standing beside her with quite an abashed look on his face.  
‘I don’t want to force myself in,’ said Bilbo quickly to mister Oakenshield.  
‘You are welcome,’ Thorin answered quite stiffly, with a face that showed the opposite.  
Bilbo swallowed. He could already predict that that was going to be a very uncomfortable evening.

Bofur, however, didn’t agree on that at all, when Bilbo told him all about it.  
‘He definitely likes you,’ his conclusion was. ‘Why else would he say that you’re welcome there?’  
Bilbo stared at him, not able to believe that Bofur actually meant this. ‘Um, maybe because common social niceties didn’t really leave him any other option?’  
‘Nonsense!’ Bofur exclaimed enthusiastically. ‘You shouldn’t be so pessimistic about everything, Bilbo! I’m sure he would’ve found some excuse if he didn’t want you there.’ His brown eyes were glistering and the dimples in his cheeks were even deeper than usually. ‘Something’s developing here, I’m sure of it.’  
‘I’m still convinced that he’s straight,’ Bilbo reminded him.  
‘I can proof you wrong about that. Tomorrow I’m shopping there again and then I’ll figure out who’s right.’  
‘Tomorrow he works on the land.’ Bilbo regretted those words as soon as they had left his mouth.  
‘Aha! You knows his schedule!’  
‘No, I don’t, I don’t know what he does on Tuesdays!’  
‘You know his schedule!’ Bofur triumphantly repeated. ‘You _do_ like him!’  
‘He’s a _nice_ man,’ Bilbo said with emphasis. ‘Nicer than I first expected him to be.’  
Bofur shook his head. ‘You can’t pretend towards me, Bilbo, you should know that by now.’  
Sometimes, Bilbo hated that Bofur knew him so well.

\-----

Of course Kíli couldn’t tell his brother about his date with Tauriel. He hated it. He hated keeping a secret from Fíli, something he wasn’t used to at all, and he hated not being able to ask Fíli for advice. To be safe, he couldn’t even say anything about his plans to Ori: he loved his best friend almost as much as he loved his brother, but he couldn’t possibly trust the guy with this information, and certainly not with keeping it from Fíli. But no matter how much he hated it, that guilty feeling and that loneliness didn’t by far outweigh the happiness and the excitement he felt every time when he thought about the fact that he was going on a date with Tauriel! She had said that his simple recognition of her existence was important to her! She had said that she would save Erebor if she could! And she had said that she would like to go on a date with him! That was worth keeping his mouth shut to everyone on this planet.

‘When are you going to tell me what you’re planning?  
Kíli grinned to Tauriel. He would never want to admit how much pleasure the power he had over her at that moment gave him. ‘Never, of course,’ he teased her. ‘Until you’re lying tied up in some creepy barn and realize what a huge mistake you’ve made.’ He winked.  
‘You really do know how to frighten a girl,’ Tauriel said without a trace of fear in her voice and Kíli laughed.  
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Just trust me: it’s gonna be something fun. And I’m sure it won’t be comparable to any date you’ve ever had in your whole life.’  
‘That won’t be too difficult.’ She turned her head and stared out of the bus window to the landscape of green hills that was passing them.  
Kíli, in turn, stared at her profile without any shame: her pointy nose, her long eyelashes, the blush on her pale cheeks, the red hair that fell around her delicate face as flames tumbling over her shoulders. He could see that she wasn’t feeling at ease and very much hoped that he would be able to make her feel one hundred percent comfortable around him by the end of this evening.  
‘Have all the dates that I have to surpass been so terribly bad?’ he light-heartedly asked.  
‘You could say so, yeah.’ She kept looking out of the window. ‘Non-existent, actually.’  
‘You’ve never been on a date before?’ Kíli unbelievingly asked; not because he looked down on that, but because he genuinely couldn’t believe that a girl like Tauriel had never dated anyone in her life.  
Finally she turned her head back to him, although she still didn’t look him in the eyes. ‘It seems I come across as rather cold,’ she admitted. ‘Distant. Unapproachable. I guess that’s what happens if you’re not that good at making small talk and prefer buying books over mascara.’  
‘I think you’re intriguing.’ It was scary to admit it and he said it so softly that he doubted if she would even hear it, but he had to say it.  
Her eyes flashed in every direction but Kíli’s eyes. ‘I’m not very good at this.’ Her voice was barely more than a whisper and Kíli could only just hear her over the sound of the bus engine.  
‘That’s okay.’ Kíli knew his own easiness in connecting with strangers and his effortlessness of making small talk filled with jokes, but he was also familiar with Ori’s social awkwardness and, thanks to the many conversations he had with his best friend, could imagine very well what Tauriel meant and why it made her feel so ill at ease.  
‘I can talk for both of us, whenever you feel like you have nothing to say,’ he tried to comfort her. He wanted to take her hand, but was afraid to scare her off. His gaze did turn downwards, however, where her pale fingers enlaced each other in her lap and moved restlessly, and he had to gather all his willpower to not take those hands in his own.  
Relieved, he noticed that the bus started to slow down and when he looked past Tauriel out of the window, he saw that the countryside had made place for a view on buildings and concrete.  
‘Have you already been to Laketown before?’ he quickly changed to a lighter subject.  
Finally, Tauriel looked at him again. She shook her head.  
‘Come, I’ll show you all the nicest spots.’ He got up and preceded her to the exit of the bus. ‘The city is built half on the lake. Some streets are made especially for the water to stream through them: with some imagination, you’ll almost think you’re in Venice. The lake itself is quite a walk from this place, but it’s really worth it. There’s always a lot to do over there. In summer there are bands playing every night and there are all kinds of food trucks and stuff. It’s still a little cold for all that right now, but the water activities are open all year round. Have you ever been on a pedalo?’  
Kíli turned towards her and saw that his always contagious enthusiasm had made Tauriel’s somewhat anxious look change into an expectant smile.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for some more background on both Thorin and Tauriel! It gets sad, but luckily they're not alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit where credit is due: as I was thinking about Tauriel's backstory, I came across a song called "Nebraska" by Adam Barnes. I don't really know why, but I felt like it could very well be about Tauriel. So I kind of took this song as the basis of her story and her personality in this fic. You should definitely check out the song by the way (and the artist, he's amazing!), I've also used some of his lines as literal quotes to keep the connection as pure as possible.

‘I’m sorry.’  
Bilbo couldn’t believe his ears. ‘For what?’ Did Thorin Oakenshield, with his always proud, even arrogant attitude, just apologize to him?  
‘For my sister, of course. She can sometimes be a little… enthusiastic.’  
‘Being enthusiastic is hardly a character trait someone should apologize for,’ said Bilbo sharply. ‘I thought it was very sweet of her to invite me.’  
Soon enough, Bilbo had understood that he wouldn’t be able to get out of this dinner: the next time he ran into Dís, she had demanded to set a date and nearly forced him to come by the next week already. He had to cancel his weekly evening with the book club for it, but Dís’ “enthusiasm” was so intimidating that he hadn’t dared to give that as an excuse.  
‘You shouldn’t feel obliged to keep us company.’  
Bilbo tried to smile, but Thorin’s obvious rejection was a little too painful for that. ‘That’s okay.’ He didn’t have a choice anymore, after all, no matter how much he dreaded having dinner with Thorin and conversing with him all evening – although this conversing seemed to be going more and more smoothly lately.  
‘How’s your research going?’ informed Thorin, just like he did a lot lately. Bilbo suspected that that was his spare question for when he couldn’t think of anything else but still felt obliged to talk to him.  
‘Quite well,’ said Bilbo, which had become his standard answer. ‘Yesterday night I made a lot of progress with that manuscript, so it’s starting to look like something now.’  
‘You spend your free evenings reading manuscripts?’ Something like scornful unbelief sounded in his voice.  
‘Yes, well, I plan my own time. I barely have to go to the university for my research, so I can work whenever I want to. All of my books are at home. I like working in the evenings.’ The way in which Thorin raised his eyebrows gave him the feeling that he had to defend himself. ‘I mean, you don’t exactly work neat nine-to-five days either, do you?’  
‘No, but I have land to cultivate. A store to run. Administration to keep up with. That doesn’t fit inside a nine-to-five schedule.’  
‘And you thought that doing research for university was a job that does? That I never have to pull all-nighters to finish in time for my deadlines?’  
That seemed to somewhat puzzle Thorin. ‘I thought… Maybe I was wrong in my judgement, Master Baggins.’  
‘You thought I was enjoying a lazy, laid-back life, didn’t you? That I was some kind of big cheese, with a fancy title, earning big money without actually having to do anything for it?’  
‘Well… Historian…’ the farmer muttered.  
But Bilbo could laugh about it. ‘Believe me, you’re not the only one thinking like that. Reality isn’t as bright, though: sky-high student debts and a huge pressure at the job. But I’m not complaining, as long as I can keep saying that my job is my biggest passion.’  
For the first time since Bilbo knew him, a hint of a smile seemed to slumber at the corners of Thorin’s mouth. ‘For that matter, we might not be so different after all,’ he admitted. ‘No matter the difficulties, it’s worth it as long as you’re doing what you’re meant to do.’ After a short silence, he continued: ‘I always knew that I would become a farmer, that I would take over Erebor alongside my brother and sister, and I would have never wanted it any other way. It did happen a bit earlier than I had expected, but every day again, I’m grateful for where I am right now.’  
Bilbo doubted if he could ask the question he wanted to ask, so he went for a compromise. ‘I didn’t know you also had a brother,’ he casually noted.  
‘Had, indeed,’ said Thorin. He sounded curtly, but not less curtly than usual, although an unfamiliar darkness fell over his blue eyes. ‘He passed when I was twenty-six. Together with my parents, my grandfather, and Dís’ husband.’  
‘What happened?’ Bilbo asked softly and full of empathy. He could feel the pain in Thorin’s voice, that seemed to have barely lessened after all those years.  
‘There was a fire. In one of the barns. We were piling up hay, so it immediately burned like a torch. We didn’t stand a chance.’ Thorin paused and seemed to be completely inward-looking, thinking back at that horrifying incident. ‘Dís was in the store. I was standing downstairs, with my grandfather. The others were above us in the hayloft, to take the hay bales from us. All of a sudden, the fire was everywhere. I tried to save my grandfather… Pulled him outside with me… After that, I wanted to go back in for the others, but it was too late. For my grandfather, it also was too late; he had inhaled too much smoke.’  
Bilbo knew nothing to say. There were no words suitable for such a loss.  
Thorin pulled himself together and his gaze grew distant and unreadable again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I let myself get carried away. I didn’t want to make you…’  
‘That’s alright,’ Bilbo interrupted him. ‘It’s good to talk about these kind of things.’  
Thorin nodded. Just when he opened his mouth to say something again, the door of the store opened and the two men were no longer alone.  
‘Twelve eighty, please,’ said Thorin and with that, the possibility for Bilbo to express how much he sympathized with Thorin, was over.

\-----

Everything about Tauriel was so much bigger than Kíli. That thought went through him when he felt her hand in his for the first time. It would have made sense if that idea had intimidated him. He felt like some kind of dwarf, whenever he had to lay his head in his neck to look her in the eyes, or whenever her fingers enclosed his with a force, but especially with a warmth, that simply felt as too much for him; too much for his tiny hands to hold without letting them overflow. But for some strange reason, it didn’t feel intimidating at all, or strange, or ludicrous. It felt like she made him grow until his head was touching the clouds, only by walking beside him and looking down to him with a smile on her face. He didn’t care that people seemed to think that a boy should be taller than a girl, and that they looked weird together; to him, it was perfect. So he gave a small squeeze in her hand, to let her know how much he liked holding it.  
‘Thank you,’ Tauriel suddenly broke the silence. ‘For this evening. I really liked it.’  
Kíli grinned. He had really liked it as well: they had cycled over the lake on a pedalo while the sun was setting slowly, after which they had shared a candy floss at the side of the lake while behind them a man with a guitar was playing some vague indie-music, and after the sun had set into the water, they had walked back to the bus stop making a detour through one of the nicer parts of the city. Somewhere on their way, he had finally plucked up enough courage to take her hand.   
During the whole evening, he had made it his job to make her laugh as much as possible, which had succeeded pretty well, especially by making a fool of himself – and one time by almost tumbling backwards into the water, although that actually hadn’t been entirely on purpose. But while they were walking through the quiet streets of Laketown, a calmness had come over him and the time of making jokes was over. At that moment, he had found out that silence in Tauriel’s company could be very comfortable, and that in her proximity it wasn’t actually necessary to be the clown all the time.  
‘I’m glad you enjoyed it,’ Kíli answered.  
She bit her lip and suddenly looked sad again.  
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her.  
She looked down to him, apparently surprised that he was so observant. ‘I don’t want to ruin this night,’ she said, hesitating.  
‘You won’t,’ said Kíli. ‘I can be serious as well.’  
‘It’s just… I’m not very good at this, Kíli. I’m not used to this. From my parents, I haven’t learned at lot about love. Arguing was their only passion, until deep in the night. And then I woke up in the morning, just in time to find a suitcase by the door, and my dad told me he loved me but he was leaving mum once more. It went on and on like that, until I ended up at Thranduil’s. His wife passed years ago and he stayed behind loveless and empty. But I won’t believe that romance is over. I want to give it a chance, but I don’t really know how to do it.’  
Kíli swallowed, undetermined about how he should react. He couldn’t say he understood it, because he couldn’t possibly imagine how bad it must have been to have her gotten placed into a foster family.   
‘I don’t know much about love either,’ he finally said. ‘I think that this is the first time I really have feelings for someone. For you,’ he quickly added, just in case that wasn’t clear enough already. ‘And it’s indeed quite scary.’ He smiled. ‘But I know how I feel, I’m not afraid.’  
She nodded, although she did look afraid.  
‘You’re right, Tauriel. Romance isn’t over. Let’s prove that together. Step by step, we won’t rush into anything.’  
Again, she nodded. ‘I’m glad to hear you say that,’ she admitted.  
He stopped and gave her a hug, but although he wanted nothing more than to hold her forever, he quickly pulled back. ‘We’ll take it slow,’ he said, earnestly. To lighten the mood a bit, he continued: ‘We’re lucky we can’t tell anyone about this, since we ought to be enemies and all. With all this time to mysteriously sneak around, we don’t really have any other option than taking it slow.’  
His heart jumped up when he saw that she started smiling again – that he was the one who could make her smile so easily.  
He kept his promise: all the way back he kept holding her hand, but when the bus stopped at her side of town, he didn’t kiss her – not even on her cheek – and the only thing he did was wave at her when she looked back at him before stepping out of the bus. The rest of the way home, he sat staring out of the window with a ridiculous grin on his face.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo makes an important discovery about Thorin and Fíli knows something's up with is little brother (angst!). Also, Nori makes a quite random but very much needed guest appearance.

As soon as Bofur stepped into the living room, Bilbo could read off his face that he was up to something.  
‘Oh, dear. Do tell me,’ he said instantly.  
‘Tell you what?’ Bofur asked with fake innocence.  
Bilbo crossed his arms in an attempt to come across as threatening as Thorin Oakenshield, which, judging from Bofur’s face, didn’t exactly had the effect he was hoping for.  
‘Your crush is bi.’  
‘What?’ Immediately, Bilbo forgot to act threatening.  
‘Your crush, Thorin Oakenshield, is bi. Bi-sex-u-al,’ he explained when Bilbo kept looking at him just as dazed.  
It took a while before Bilbo recovered his voice. ‘First of all: I don’t have a crush, and certainly not on Thorin Oakenshield,’ he started. ‘And secondly: I don’t care if he’s into men, women or even dragons, because I don’t have a crush on him.’  
‘That’s the same point twice,’ said Bofur.  
‘Thirdly,’ Bilbo continued, raising his voice, ‘how did you find out about this?’  
‘Finally! The right questions are being asked! Well, I paid another visit to Erebor Farm – not on Friday, of course, then that fine man works on the land, everybody knows that – ‘  
Bilbo groaned. ‘Bofur, don’t prolong this. You didn’t tell him that I…’  
‘That you’re crazy about him?’ Bofur’s eyes got a devilish glimmer in them and he was clearly enjoying Bilbo’s concerns. ‘No, of course not, calm down.’  
‘What did you say?’ Bilbo asked with emphasis.  
‘Seriously, don’t worry, it was a very normal conversation. I didn’t even have to put any effort into it! I just started some story about having a date with a man and wanting to cook him a nice meal and that kind of nonsense, and when he didn’t really react, I asked him if that bothered him, and he assured me that that wasn’t the case because he himself was bi. Voilà!’  
Bilbo shook his head. ‘I really can’t believe you sometimes.’  
‘I was actually hoping for a reaction like “Thank you, Bofur, you’re the best friend I could wish for and now that I know this, I finally dare to admit how very much I’m into this dude.”’  
Bilbo couldn’t help it; he started laughing. ‘You’re an idiot, Bofur, but you mean well, so yes, thank you.’  
‘And?’  
‘And… Just that he’s bi, doesn’t mean he’s into _me_. I still believe he doesn’t even like me that much.’  
Bofur uttered an exaggerated sigh. ‘You are hopeless, Bilbo Baggins. And you’re still not denying that you are a little bit into him.’  
Bilbo frowned and thought about the things Thorin had told him last time, the things that explained why he always was so inward-looking. ‘Maybe a very, _very_ little bit.’ He knew that he could better not say that to Bofur, who was already far too enthusiastic about this whole matter, but he couldn’t bring himself to lie.

And then there was another matter, one for which Bofur was utterly useless, with his weird hats, his crazy moustache and his tendency to always wear brown. For this matter, he phoned Nori, a friend whom he saw a lot less than Bofur but who was of much more use than Bofur for this.  
Since a few years, Nori didn’t live in the village anymore but in Laketown itself, where life was quicker and louder and he, with his extravagant style, was much more at home. However, for Bilbo he didn’t mind coming back to Shire every now and then.  
‘Tell me, what kind of date is it?’ he asked while browsing through Bilbo’s closet, which was primarily filled with colourful dress shirts and waistcoats, and comfortable trousers.  
‘Well, a date is a pretty big word for it. Actually it’s not a date at all,’ Bilbo explained while scratching his nose. ‘It’s more like a… A dinner. With his sister. And probably his nephews as well. Not a date. Certainly not a date. He doesn’t even know that I…’  
‘Okay, so you have to impress him, but not in a too flashy way,’ Nori cogitated. ‘Confidence, a little bit of sex, but nothing inappropriate.’  
‘I don’t think I’m in possession of even one piece of clothing that in any way radiates sex,’ Bilbo dryly noted.  
‘Oh, yes you do. It’s all about the right combination. Your style is perfect to not make it too obvious.’  
‘Since when do you braid your hair, by the way?’  
‘Oh, I started doing that a while ago,’ Nori said vaguely while he browsed through Bilbo’s many different dress shirts. ‘It’s comfortable.’  
‘It’s quite… remarkable. But in a good way,’ Bilbo quickly added to that. ‘It suits you.’  
Nori laughed. ‘I know. Here, try this one. Do you have any trousers that aren’t beige?’ A light disapproval sounded through in his voice at that question.  
‘Yes, somewhere in the back, I guess,’ said Bilbo while taking Nori’s combination and starting to change.  
After many changing sessions, Nori finally approved of the result: it was a wide-falling dress-shirt with vertical stripes in light shades of beige and decent brown trousers, combined with a green gilet to give the ensemble some colour and cheer. According to Nori, clothes could communicate, and this outfit communicated “I am a respectable and very attractive man who is perfect for farmers.” Bilbo decided not to tell him how ridiculous that sounded.

\-----

It was impossible for Kíli to hide his joy. At school, he couldn’t stop himself from constantly glancing at Tauriel, and the times when she coincidentally looked his way at the same time made his heart jump without exception. Too often, he caught himself grinning at his math or English assignments like a lunatic, as if he suddenly enjoyed doing homework. Nothing was less true than that; on the contrary, he got less work done than ever.  
But they kept prudent, just like they had agreed upon: Tauriel was often to be found in the company of her foster brother Legolas and during classes, Kíli often made sure to choose a spot far away from her, no matter how much effort that cost him sometimes – preferably some place behind her, so that he could easily ignore the teachers’ boring monologues and stare at her back for the whole hour and admire the way the sunlight lit up her hair.

‘What’s going on with you?’ Fíli kept asking him.  
‘Nothing!’ he kept exclaiming, but the examining looks his brother gave him, made clear enough that Fíli wouldn’t be misled for much longer.  
Kíli tried not to think about that, but that unpleasant realization started to surface ever more often. Things were good between Kíli and Tauriel, and they wouldn’t be able to keep this secret forever. Sooner or later, the moment had to come on which he would make his brother, his mother and especially his uncle furious. There was nothing what he wanted less than to shatter this perfect bubble of happiness, but there were also few things more inevitable than that. He didn’t want to mess this up, but no matter whom he would choose, messing up was something he would certainly do, if not one way, then the other way round.

‘Hey! Idiot!’  
He jumped up and only then saw that Fíli was standing right in front of him.  
‘Where is your mind at lately?’  
‘At the farm, where else?!’  
‘You are literally sitting amongst the crops without even lifting one finger.’  
‘No, I’m not, I was busy!’  
Fíli looked down, where Kíli’s crate was standing, and back up. ‘So that’s why your crate is empty?’  
‘I just – ‘  
‘Kíli, stop. Why are you lying to me?’  
Only at that moment, Kíli realized that Fíli wasn’t irritated, but just serious. Just like with their uncle, that distinction was difficult to make at times. It were moments like this when it suddenly struck Kíli how much Fíli and uncle Thorin were alike.  
‘I’m not lying,’ Kíli weakly tried, but of course Fíli didn’t fall for that.  
‘Don’t make it worse now,’ he said, earnest. ‘What’s going on?’  
‘There’s nothing… going on.’  
At his surprise, Fíli began to laugh. ‘Dude, you’re already a bad liar, please don’t try to keep it up towards me.’ But very quickly, he grew serious again. ‘Whatever it is, I’ll help you. I’ve saved your ass often enough already; no matter how bad it is, I can handle this one too. That’s what older brothers are for, right?’  
Kíli hesitated. Yesterday, when they had lingered around in the empty gym after their gym class, he had talked with her about how they couldn’t keep dating in secret for much longer. They had concluded that they would postpone it for a little while, at least until a next date, and Kíli wanted to keep that promise. But seeing Fíli’s unusually earnest face, and hearing those comforting words, which he clearly meant, made it extremely difficult for him.  
‘Is there really nothing you could get mad about?’ he reluctantly asked.  
‘Well, I mean, if you killed someone or dealt drugs or impregnated someone or something like that… I don’t know if I could keep my calm then. But even then, I would help you fix it. Whatever it is. We don’t keep secrets from each other.’  
That was right and that was exactly why Kíli hated it so much to not be able to share this secret, which made him so happy, with Fíli.  
‘I’m dating someone,’ he blurted out. ‘It’s still a very early stage. You can’t tell anyone.’  
Fíli stared at him. ‘Seriously, is that what this is all about? Did you have to get me so worried for _that_?!’  
‘No, that’s not all.’  
‘Please tell me you didn’t really impregnate someone.’  
‘No, of course not, just listen for a moment! She’s… You hate her, Fíli. You despise her.’  
Fíli frowned. ‘There aren’t many people I really despise.’  
‘You hate her, and uncle Thorin hates her, and mum hates her too. Even though they don’t even know her yet, they would never allow it.’  
Fíli was silent and Kíli’s heart beat in his throat while he watched his brother’s face and saw something fall into place there.  
‘It’s that Greenleaf-girl, isn’t it? Tauriel?’  
Kíli nodded and turned his gaze down to the soil. He didn’t dare to look at Fíli and waited for his outburst.   
Yes, he had promised Kíli to clean up his mess; in this case that promise probably meant that he would personally make sure that everything between Kíli and Tauriel would end today. No, this was Fíli, he always went the extra mile: he would make sure that it would end yesterday, with retrospective effect.  
Suddenly, he felt Fíli’s hand on his shoulder. ‘Hey, Kíli.’ His voice sounded soft, like he was talking to a sick person. ‘Did you genuinely think that that was something you could never share with me?’  
Kíli nodded, still anxious about what was going to happen.  
‘I’m sorry,’ said Fíli. At Kíli’s surprise, he sounded emotional. ‘I’m sorry if I ever judged you too harshly for the things you do, for the times you get yourself into trouble. It was never my intention to give you the idea that I don’t… That I don’t blindly support you, in every choice you make.’  
Finally, Kíli dared to look Fíli in the eyes and he couldn’t remember if he had ever seen his older brother look so serious before.  
‘This is something entirely different than securing the storm net wrongly, or not shutting the hencoop correctly, or not crossing off your apples in the administration. I could never get mad about this, Kíli! This is someone you care about, someone who makes you happy! This is bigger than two rivalling farms – ‘  
‘That’s not the point,’ Kíli interrupted him, because guilt overpowered him at those far too understanding words. ‘Their farm is the reason that our whole future might be cancelled.’  
But Fíli shook his head. ‘Don’t you dare get that thought into your head. Our future at Erebor isn’t going anywhere. And apart from that, she isn’t the one who caused that. You can’t blame her for her father having a certain company. And I definitely can’t blame you for having feelings for her. To be quite honest, I’m not even that surprised about it.’  
‘You’re not?’  
Finally, Fíli got his usual cheerful smile back on his face. ‘Did you really think I wouldn’t notice those worshipping puppy-eyes with which you constantly follow her?’  
Kíli laughed. ‘And here I was thinking I was being subtle and sneaky.’  
Fíli shook his head. ‘Just as subtle as a fire-breathing dragon, you idiot.’  
‘Thanks, Fíli,’ said Kíli, earnestly. Fíli’s reaction had lifted an enormous weight off his shoulders and relief flooded through him. The idea that he wasn’t in this alone when he would have to tell his mother and uncle about Tauriel, immediately made the whole world a hundred times more beautiful. His mother and uncle… He had a feeling that those two would react a whole lot less kindly than his brother. But in any case, he did have Fíli at his side. Together with Fíli he could fight a whole army, so facing his mother and uncle would be a piece of cake.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for the long anticipated/dreaded dinner at the Durin's! Thorin is being kind of a dick and Kíli is having some angsty feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took a bit longer! I've been very busy, but now I have a whole week off so hopefully the next chapter(s) will be up soon (or, well, soon after the weekend, because I'm going away first, sorry about that! I promise I'll try my best to update asap)  
> Oh, and enjoy this guest appearance of one of our favourite Dwarfs ;)

‘Bilbo! Great to have you here, come in.’  
‘I brought you something.’  
Dís took the package from him. ‘Ah, how thoughtful of you! You know that wasn’t necessary, right?’  
‘Hey, mister Boggins!’ called Kíli, who appeared behind his mother in the hallway.  
Dís opened the door further for Bilbo and he stepped inside a big kitchen that was, although furnished in a rather old-fashioned style, very light and welcoming thanks to the big windows looking over the fields, and had a homely atmosphere.  
Thorin was already inside the kitchen, nonchalantly leaning against the countertop and talking to a man Bilbo didn’t know – and didn’t have eyes for either, because he saw Thorin wearing something else than his blue overalls for the first time. His long curls were damp and gave away that he had just showered, and the thick woollen cardigan he was wearing made him even more robust than he already was.  
‘Hello, master Baggins,’ Thorin greeted him, hardly even looking at him.  
That was the moment on which Bilbo stopped staring at him and moved his gaze to the man in front of Thorin: a huge guy, next to whom Thorin almost seemed small, with a balding head and muscled arms full of tattoos. The man took Bilbo up from head to toe with a threatening gaze. Then he reached out his hand, only to break every bone in Bilbo’s when Bilbo shook it.  
‘Dwalin,’ he said with a deep voice, as if it was a curse instead of his name.  
‘Bilbo,’ Bilbo managed to get out, weakly.  
‘Well, I’ll be on my way.’ Dwalin gave Thorin a heavy pat on his shoulder. ‘Have a nice meal, Thorin. I’ll talk to you later.’  
In the kitchen, an awkward silence fell, while Kíli’s disappointed voice sounded from the hallway: ‘Are you leaving already?’  
‘I’ll see you soon, Kíli,’ Dwalin’s voice rumbled and some “friendly” blows sounded. Bilbo lively imagined how that tiny boy got beaten black and blue and had to put a lot of effort into getting that image from his head.  
‘That was Dwalin. A friend,’ Thorin explained.  
‘Ah,’ said Bilbo. He wondered how friendly exactly Thorin and Dwalin were. Apparently the man knew his family well. But then, Dís stepped into the kitchen and he called a halt to himself: that was none of his business.  
‘Thorin, look what Bilbo brought with him! It’s red wine, and a very good one, as far as I can see.’  
Thorin took the bottle from her and put it away. ‘I’m more of a beer-person, master Baggins,’ he grouchily said.  
Bilbo couldn’t believe the rudeness of this man at times. For almost a quarter of an hour, he had been standing doubting inside the best wine store of Laketown just to find the taste he thought would fit Thorin Oakenshield best – and this was his response.  
‘Then I’ll take it back home and enjoy it myself,’ he said in a flippant tone, converting his upset feelings into passive-aggressiveness.  
That seemed to throw Thorin off-guard. Apparently he hadn’t expected a retort from the tiny, always friendly and slightly shy man in front of him, but if he was thinking Bilbo always let people walk all over him, he was obviously wrong.  
‘Kíli, where is your brother?’ asked Dís. ‘He isn’t still outside working, is he?’  
‘No, I’m here, mum.’ Fíli just walked into the kitchen.  
Dís turned around and as soon as she saw him, she put her hands in her sides.  
‘Oh no,’ Thorin mumbled under his breath, so that only Bilbo could hear him.  
‘You are covered in mud! Didn’t I tell you we were having a guest over?!’  
‘I don’t mind, it’s really no – ‘  
Dís ignored Bilbo completely. ‘Look at the mess you’re leaving! That hallway does not clean itself!’  
‘I was working! Be glad that I’m helping out so much!’  
Shaking her head, Dís turned away from her son; it was clear that she couldn’t withstand his blue-eyed puppy look. ‘As long as you clean up all that mud in the hall by yourself. Go wash your hands and sit down,’ she sighed.

As soon as everyone was sitting at the table with a plate of delicious smelling filled courgettes in front of them, Bilbo informed how the farm was doing. He immediately regretted that: the cosy atmosphere changed like a dime and the boys’ happy faces turned into worrying frowns. Thorin took a big mouthful of food to not have to answer the question, although that probably got him some nasty blisters in his gullet.  
‘I started a training to become a bee-keeper and we’re busy preparing a bit of our land for some sheep,’ Dís told. ‘But those are all things that’ll only have long-term results. At the moment it’s mostly a huge gap in our capital.’  
‘And do you know how business at the other side of the village is going?’ Bilbo almost didn’t dare to ask it.  
Fíli and Kíli exchanged a meaningful gaze and Thorin, who had finally emptied his mouth again, said: ‘I hope they’ll rot in their vegan idiocy.’  
Dís uttered a reproaching sound and even the boys couldn’t laugh about it. Thorin’s rude remark left a pressing, uncomfortable silence and Bilbo desperately sought for a different subject to bring back the good atmosphere of earlier.  
‘Your view from this kitchen is stunning,’ he tried, weakly.  
Dís took the bait gratefully. ‘Thank you! I still enjoy it every day. Every morning, this right here is the perfect spot to see the sunrise. Most of the time we’re far too busy to really look at it, of course, but it is an amazing view every time again!’  
After that, there was some more babbling about safer subjects, and most of the time, Bilbo could stuff himself with Dís’ delicious food while listening to the familial bickering that was so unfamiliar to himself.

\-----

It was clear that their mother had been toiling in the kitchen for their guest. Of course, Kíli had no problems with that, and Fíli, who was devouring his food like a pig next to him, clearly agreed on that.  
But a while ago, Fíli had told him something about mister Boggins – sorry, mister Baggins –which he himself hadn’t been aware of at all, and that put this nice visit in a vastly different perspective. It explained why their mother had put so much effort into this evening – and at the same time showed that she would never be able to compensate for what uncle Thorin single-handedly, and probably completely unwittingly, knew to mess up: his gaze was constantly directed straight to his plate, the few things he said were rude, and he was wearing some furry cardigan which made him look like a lion that could tear their guest apart at any moment. For people who didn’t know Thorin that well, it would seem like a ridiculous idea, but to Thorin’s own family it was crystal-clear: uncle Thorin had a thing for Bilbo Baggins.  
When Fíli had first made that guess, Kíli had burst into laughter – until he saw his mother’s face. He looked at her in expectation of finding a companion to tell Fíli what an idiot he was, but instead Dís shook her head and declared that Thorin was totally hopeless when it came to love and really needed some help. Apparently, she had seen through it weeks before Fíli. However, their mother had explicitly forbidden them to let Thorin know anything about their conjectures, and especially to meddle in it.  
She was probably right in doing so. Kíli had already machinated a million plans to get those two together, but all of them would indeed most probably have catastrophic results and that was something Kíli didn’t really want for his uncle.  
In any case, he didn’t mind that Thorin apparently liked this man so much: mister Baggins was always friendly and he came to the store conspicuously often, always exactly on the days when Thorin was working there, and lately more often for less groceries, with longer conversations at the counter whenever there weren’t any other customers around.  
Most of all, Kíli wanted his uncle to be a little happier, because happy was something that he didn’t seem to be often lately, especially since the arrival of the new farm.

Naturally, those thoughts brought him to his own love life. There weren’t many moments when he wasn’t thinking about Tauriel anyway. Within a few weeks, she had changed him from the cool, carefree kid into some cheesy dreamer from a bad romantic comedy. But he didn’t even mind. Especially now that Fíli knew his secret and was still on his side, he knew that those cheesy feelings were only right.  
But the thought alone of his uncle’s reaction was terrifying. The more often Thorin made dark jokes or hateful remarks about the Greenleaf family, the more Kíli got convinced that he would simply forbid Kíli to ever see Tauriel again. He would send him to another school, give him house arrest, take away his phone… If his uncle was angry enough, he was capable of a lot of things. Kíli knew that better than anyone.  
And then he hadn’t even started his mother yet. Because no matter how much it could seem like it, in the end Thorin wasn’t the one responsible for raising him. That was Dís and Dís alone. His mother, who since the arrival of the new farm continually had huge bags under her eyes. His mother, who had lost her husband, brother, father and grandfather all at once ten years ago, and to whom the farm was about everything she had left.  
Kíli couldn’t predict how his mother would react to the news that her son loved the girl whose family was the reason for all her sorrows. He didn’t know if she could actually forbid him anything. But it was for sure that she would be furious, whether she would express it by screaming or punishing or Disappointment with a capital D. He loved his mother; he couldn’t bring himself to hurting her any further. Of course, he drove her mad at times, whenever he came home with worrying grades, or whenever school called her that he had skipped classes, or whenever he left his sports bag lying around in the hallway, or whenever he overslept on Saturdays when he was supposed to be in the store… He could go on for a while with this list. But he could easily compensate all those things by being a person who she generally would call “good”, whenever he greeted her with a hug in the morning, whenever he helped her with the dishes after a long day of work without her having to ask him to, whenever he came sitting next to her on the couch on Friday night instead of going to some party in the village, whenever he asked her to tell stories about his dad and his grandfather… This list turned out to be just as endless as the first one. And Kíli was scared as hell that one big mistake – like dating Tauriel – would disturb that balance once and for all.  
He knew that this situation was unsustainable: things between him and Tauriel weren’t going to change anytime soon. For the first time in his life, he was genuinely serious about something and it only got better as they spent more time together. No matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t keep procrastinating a confession forever.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thorin is getting more interested in Bilbo and Kíli and Tauriel are discussing a next step

After dinner, Bilbo offered to do the dishes and he stayed behind together with Thorin for that task while Fíli and Kíli swiftly disappeared and Dís put on her jacket to go feed the chickens.  
‘You have an orchard as well, don’t you?’ Bilbo asked in order to prevent an uncomfortable silence.  
Thorin nodded.  
‘I don’t see any trees.’  
‘The orchard is at the back of the house, it lies behind the grasslands. It is visible from my side of the house. I, myself, like the trees better than the lower growths.’  
Bilbo nodded. While he was drying the plates carefully, he kept glancing at Thorin’s rough hands, which seemed to be immune to the heat of the lather, and were working purposive. ‘I think it’s stunning around here, with all the fields and wide views, but I can imagine that you’d miss the woods at times. Mirkwood is perfect for autumn walks.’  
Thorin snuffled scornfully. ‘I don’t go there anymore.’  
‘Yes, I understand that.’ Bilbo could well imagine what a thorn in his sight Greenleaf’s modern farm should be to Thorin. It was a building that pulled a lot of attention from wherever you wanted to go into the forest.  
He dared to look at Thorin’s face instead of his hands for a moment. ‘You’re still worrying, aren’t you?’  
‘Of course I’m worrying,’ Thorin answered. He quickly looked around, as if he wanted to be sure that his nephews weren’t in proximity, and continued in a soft voice: ‘They’re all saying I made the right decision with those investments and that the commercial in last week’s newspaper will work wonders, but the fact remains that it was a gamble. A gamble which _I_ made, and over which I have full responsibility. I don’t like gambling.’  
Bilbo wished that he could reassure Thorin, but the only words he could think of were empty, meaningless phrases like “it will be fine” or “don’t think about it too much” and he knew that Thorin wouldn’t appreciate such statements.  
‘You’re not in this alone,’ he said instead after a while – just another statement like that, but a slightly less bad one, because at least this one was true. ‘It’s not all on your shoulders: that’s what your family is for.’  
Thorin nodded. ‘What about your family?’ he suddenly asked. ‘It seems strange that you know mine so well, while I know nothing about yours.’  
‘There’s not that much to tell about my family,’ said Bilbo.  
‘I don’t believe that.’  
‘They live far away. The family that’s still there, anyway. My parents both died when they were relatively young. I don’t have any siblings; only a few cousins. With one of them, I’m in a pretty nasty argument since my parents’ death. She had hoped for a bigger inheritance: the home they left me, to be precise. And then there’s a handful of cousins who are quite nice, but whom I only see at family parties a few times a year. They all have their own families now, which seem to grow bigger with every year. My eldest nephew, Frodo, writes me a letter every now and then, and when it’s possible he comes to visit me. He’s a few years younger than your nephews, so don’t ask me why he likes to hang out with a boring old man like me.’ Bilbo sniggered and Thorin also made a sound that almost resembled a laugh.  
Meanwhile, the dishes were done and Bilbo wiped the countertops while Thorin put the glasses in a cupboard.  
‘Then I should be on my way soon,’ said Bilbo. Actually, he didn’t feel like saying goodbye at all, just when he was finally having a conversation with Thorin that was actually about something, but the dishes were done and leaving was the polite thing to do.  
‘Do you have any other plans for tonight?’ Thorin informed.  
‘Well, no, actually not. I was thinking about grabbing a good book and sitting down with that in my armchair and not getting out of it until deep in the night. But aside from that, no, no big plans.’  
‘If you feel like it… I still have a bottle of red wine lying around here that must be opened.’  
Bilbo frowned. ‘I thought you were more of a beer-person?’  
‘I had hoped that you would’ve known me well enough to guess that. All the more reason to stay a little while longer, master Baggins.’  
Of course, Bilbo could impossibly turn down that offer. ‘Okay, one glass,’ he said. ‘I do have to drive back.’  
‘Oh, you’re already opening that wine?’  
Bilbo had totally forgotten that this was actually Dís’ house and that this of course wouldn’t be an evening with Thorin alone.  
‘Do you want some too?’ Thorin asked, who just like Bilbo seemed to be a bit startled by her sudden return.  
‘No, thanks. I’ll be on the couch under a blanket watching some bad tv-shows. You can empty that bottle at your own place.’  
‘But it was for you as well!’ Bilbo called after her when she walked towards the living room.  
‘You can save some for me,’ Dís answered laconically.  
And thus it happened that the evening, against all expectations, was nowhere near over, but instead Bilbo followed Thorin outside to finally see his side of the house.

\-----

It was an exceptionally beautiful day: Kíli and Tauriel were sitting with their feet in the water of the lake, the sun warming their backs and not a single cloud in the sky. His left hand was put loosely on her right and with a calm feeling inside that he didn’t have often, he let his head rest on Tauriel’s shoulder. Her long hairs tickled against his ear, but he didn’t mind.  
‘Thranduil is starting to notice that I’m often away from home,’ said Tauriel, with which she burst Kíli’s joyful bubble and coarsely pulled him back into reality.  
‘Let’s not think about that for a while,’ he sighed. Her skin felt warm against his and her nose was a little bit sunburnt, what weirdly enough looked extremely adorable on her.  
‘What’s your plan?’  
‘You know I don’t have a plan, right?’ Begrudgingly, he sat upright so that he could look at her. ‘Why would you think I have a plan?’  
Tauriel smiled. ‘Well, maybe that was indeed a bit naïve. But…’ She seemed to hesitate. ‘I’m so happy every time I’m with you, Kíli.’  
He gave her his most radiant smile in return. It wasn’t even needed to agree on that with words.  
‘We’ve been doing this for more than a month now. If it’s up to me… If it’s up to me, this is more than just dating. What do you think?’  
It seemed so childish, to determine what they were of each other, but Tauriel was right: no matter how amazing this last month had been, it was confusing as well. Was it a real relationship already? Should they call each other boyfriend and girlfriend? It was ridiculous to think about that, but it was true that they had been exceptionally vague about that towards each other; Kíli because he was afraid to act too quickly for her, and Tauriel probably because she was afraid to take the initiative.  
‘I think,’ Kíli’s heart was beating in his chest while he – for a change – was weighing his words carefully. ‘I think that I want nothing more than to walk through school holding your hand. I want you to know where I live, to have you always feel comforted and safe with me, and to not have to hide ourselves in Laketown for a few stolen moments in a place where nobody knows us.’  
Tauriel was beaming more ardently than the sun in the sky above them. ‘I did start to love Laketown, though,’ she admitted.  
‘Are you sure it’s about Laketown? Or is it about the memories in Laketown?’  
She laughed, but instead of answering, she leaned forward to press her lips on his. Grateful, Kíli closed his eyes and he smoothly wrapped his arms around her and brushed his fingers through her hair. Her lips were soft and felt delicate, like the wings of a butterfly or the petals of a flower, brushing against his. They were overwhelming in so many ways. They were addicting, just like everything about Tauriel was.  
Vaguely, in the background, Kíli heard the bawling of the boys playing soccer on the beach. He felt how Tauriel got distracted by it, how it made her uneasy, but he wrapped his arms a little tighter around her and with his mouth made her forget her surroundings again. Moments like this one were scarce enough already; if they also had to hide for random strangers, there wouldn’t be any of them left.  
After a while, Tauriel pulled back again. She let herself fall backwards into the sand and Kíli followed her example. She took his hand and interwove her fingers with his, after which she turned her head to the right and stared into his eyes without saying a word.  
Kíli couldn’t do anything except grinning at her like an idiot. Their kiss had made him reckless. He meant what he had said: if they really were together from now on, he didn’t want to hide her for one more moment.  
‘Next weekend, you’re gonna have dinner with us,’ he told her.  
She bit her lip. ‘Are you sure about that?’ she asked, her eyebrows frowned in an elegant bow.  
He nodded. ‘You’re right: there’s no use in procrastinating this. I’m done with it.’


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The very much dreaded introduction of Tauriel to Kíli's family is finally happening

When Bilbo arrived at Erebor, he saw a familiar car parked on the yard, and indeed: in the store he immediately saw his best friend standing between two shelves.  
‘Hey, Bofur!’ He tapped him on his shoulder and got greeted by his cheerful smile when he turned around.  
‘Bilbo! Such a coincidence! How are you doing?’  
‘Quite well. I actually just finished the first concept of my research, so I thought I’d come down here to buy some extra eggs for baking a pie to celebrate.’  
‘You drove all this way just for a bunch of eggs?’  
Bilbo sent Bofur a warning look, purposefully avoiding the counter with his gaze, where Thorin was standing and able to hear everything they were saying. ‘You know how chaotic I can be at times.’  
‘I don’t really find you that…’ Finally, he reacted to Bilbo’s begging looks. ‘Oh, yes, I get it!’ Bilbo just wanted to release his breath, when Bofur continued quasi-innocently: ‘What love can do to a man, right?’  
‘Bofur,’ Bilbo hissed, but Bofur enjoyed his humiliation far too much and Bilbo wasn’t by far intimidating enough.  
‘Hey, I got what I needed, I’ll talk to you later.’ He gave Bilbo a sympathetic pat on his shoulder and walked over to the counter.  
‘How did your date go?’ Apparently, Thorin had remembered the nonsensical story Bofur had made up to find out whether he was into men.   
Bilbo, however, was pleased to establish that he sounded less interested and more hostile than when he was talking to Bilbo.  
Bofur turned around and gave Bilbo an effusive wink. ‘Very well,’ he told Thorin. ‘There’s definitely gonna be a follow-up. He’s a great guy, we had an amazing time together.’ He sighed dramatically. ‘I keep thinking about him all the time. You probably know the feeling, am I right?’  
‘Eight forty-five,’ Thorin said curtly, instead of answering.  
If it had been Bofur’s plan to get some kind of confession out of Thorin, he had little success this time. Apparently he realized that Thorin didn’t feel like talking to him, because he paid and then left with a ‘See you soon!’ towards Bilbo.

‘You know that guy?’ Thorin asked when Bilbo came at the counter.  
‘Yes, he’s a good friend of mine,’ Bilbo declared. ‘A bit of an idiot, to be quite honest,’ he added with a fond smile.  
Thorin turned out to not be in a talkative mood: he squared up and afterwards Bilbo left the store.  
‘Bilbo?’  
At the door, he turned around.  
‘Do you already have plans for this weekend?’  
‘No, why?’ He held his breath.  
‘You’re welcome to come have dinner here again.’  
‘Yes, I’d like that very much!’ Bilbo immediately said. He couldn’t believe that this was happening.  
‘With Dís and the boys, of course. She asked if you would want to pay us a visit again anytime soon. Apparently, she appreciated your company.’  
This was something Bilbo could better believe. But for a very short instant he had believed that, maybe, Thorin was asking him on a date, and bitter disappointment overpowered him. He swallowed. ‘Um, yes, of course. I um… That sounds nice,’ he stammered, after which he shut the door as fast as he could.

As soon as he got home, he called Bofur. He had of course already told Bofur everything about the evening of that first dinner: how he had stayed with Thorin on his couch for hours afterwards, talking about all kinds of things in a way he hadn’t held possible, and how he had again had an animated conversation with him the next time he encountered him in the store. Of course, nothing had happened that night at Thorin’s, in spite of – in Thorin’s case – great quantities of red wine, but nevertheless, it had given Bilbo the idea that maybe a spark had ignited. And Bofur, of course, had only encouraged that idea. Now it immediately was obvious once more that he had been seeing all kinds of things that weren’t actually there after all.  
‘I told you about Dwalin, didn’t I?’ Bilbo asked after giving Bofur the last update.  
‘That scary dude you met at Thorin’s?’  
‘Yes, him. I’m pretty sure something’s going on between them. He’s much more Thorin’s type: big, muscled, dangerous, tattooed…’  
‘You’re only thinking that because he’s the opposite of yourself,’ said Bofur in an attempt to cheer him up. ‘That is the way to drive yourself crazy. I’m sure they’re just good friends. Who knows, they might be cousins just as well.’  
Bilbo sighed. ‘I don’t know… After what just happened, I don’t dare to hope for anything anymore.’  
‘Listen to me now, Bilbo Baggins,’ Bofur said in a strict voice. ‘You are going to have dinner over there this weekend, and you will do your best! You’re gonna put on your friendliest smile, you’re gonna be joking with those nephews of his, you’re gonna compliment his sister about her cooking skills… You’re not gonna give up now. You’re going to subtly blow Thorin completely away. Understood?’  
That unusual strictness of Bofur baffled Bilbo. ‘Understood,’ he agreed.   
Bofur was right: he couldn’t let himself be discouraged now, only because the old, grumpy Thorin he had gotten to know in the beginning had returned now.

\-----

‘Is it alright if I have a friend over for dinner tonight?’ Kíli casually asked his mother, while they were busy placing the new fencing to prepare for the arrival of the sheep.  
‘Tonight we’re already having Bilbo over for dinner, didn’t I tell you about that?’  
‘No.’ Or maybe she did, he actually had no idea, he had been far too busy trying to ask if Tauriel could come over and subsequently not daring to ask it after all.  
‘I kinda already promised her that she could come,’ he said. ‘Please?’  
Dís sighed.  
‘She’s very important to me. I want you guys to meet her.’  
That got her attention: she looked up from her work to give Kíli an investigative look. ‘A girl who is very important to you?’ she asked, curious.  
Kíli nodded.  
‘Tell me a little bit more about her!’  
‘Um… I know her from school. She’s new. And um…’ He shrugged awkwardly. ‘She’s really nice,’ he sheepishly concluded.  
‘And?’  
Kíli realized that he had still been very vague about their exact relation. ‘She’s my girlfriend, since last week,’ he admitted.  
Dís smiled radiantly. ‘Of course she’s welcome here! Why didn’t you tell this earlier? What’s her name, where is she from? Does she ever come to our store?’  
‘You’ll see it when she’s coming, alright?’ He felt terrible.  
But Dís interpreted it completely the wrong way and looked at her son full of amusement. ‘You’re getting all shy about it! I suppose you really like this girl.’

And so it happened that he picked Tauriel up at the bus stop that evening.  
‘We’re eating at my uncle’s,’ he told her as they were walking hand in hand onto the yard. ‘There’s another guest as well. We think that Thorin likes him so my mum is trying to set them up. She practically forced him to make dinner himself, to impress mister Boggins or something – not that that’s going to work, he isn’t that great of a cook. And he’s far too grumpy to impress anyone in any way, so I don’t really give it much of a chance. But mister Boggins is very nice, so I actually do hope it’ll turn into something anyway. Actually his name is mister Baggins, I think, but I keep forgetting that, so you’d better not call him mister Boggins, I don’t know if he likes that.’  
‘Kíli.’ Tauriel stopped walking and gave him a serious look.  
‘I’m sorry.’ He had started rattling on so much that he only now noticed that he was out of breath.  
‘It’s gonna be okay,’ she softly said. She showed him a brave smile. ‘If that mister Baggins or Boggins or whatever is there too, your uncle surely won’t want to make a scene.’  
‘My mum – ‘  
‘Your mother sounds like a very sweet woman. And Fíli is there as well. He will help us get through it.’  
Kíli nodded. ‘Okay, then. Let’s go.’  
He opened the door for her and together they stepped inside Thorin’s kitchen, where everyone was already gathered around the table.

‘Mum, Thorin… Bilbo… This is Tauriel,’ Kíli announced with a trembling voice.  
His mother’s face stayed blank, but Thorin clearly immediately made the connection: he squinted his eyes and after that, his gaze grew hard and cold, in a certain way calculative. It was a gaze Kíli had never seen on him before, and one which frightened him.  
‘Tauriel,’ he repeated with his low, intimidating voice. Kíli squeezed her hand. ‘Greenleaf?’  
He nodded and beside him, Tauriel did the same.  
Thorin raised from his chair, upright in his full length. It felt like his emanation filled the whole kitchen. ‘Leave,’ he said.  
A deadly silence stretched out.  
‘Uncle – ‘  
With a simple movement of his hand, Thorin cut Fíli off.   
‘I cannot believe that you’re doing this,’ he said to Kíli with that same cold voice full of quiet anger. ‘Does Erebor mean nothing to you? Does this whole situation mean so little to you that you – ‘  
‘Uncle Thorin, he – ‘  
‘I said, leave!’


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poor Bilbo gets pulled into a situation he didn't sign up for...

Kíli flinched under his uncle’s cruel words. Bilbo could only speechlessly watch how Thorin sent his own nephew out of his home, how Dís let everything happen, her face expressionless, without doing anything, and how Fíli desperately watched back and forth between them, unable to stop Thorin.  
The tension inside the kitchen was almost tangible and the heavy silence stretched out for seconds, until Kíli straightened his back, looked his uncle defiantly into his eyes for one last time, and then pulled Tauriel with him through the door.

Breathing heavily, Thorin sat down again.  
Finally, Bilbo regained his voice. ‘Thorin,’ he cautiously said. ‘You cannot…’  
‘You don’t get it!’ Thorin cried out to him, but Bilbo wasn’t afraid of Thorin. ‘This is about loyalty. This cannot… He has to understand that this can’t be tolerated.’  
With a jerk, Fíli shoved his chair backwards, the legs screeching over the tiles.  
‘I belong with my brother,’ he declared. His usually so amiable voice sounded almost as cold as his uncle’s. ‘If you’re sending him away, you’re sending me away too.’ And without saying another word, he marched outside.  
Thorin didn’t say anything, but directed his gaze to Dís.  
She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe… He tried to tell me, this afternoon. I thought he was just a little nervous, because it was the first time he was really in love, but _this_ … I didn’t see this coming.’  
‘He must – ‘  
‘He’s _my_ son Thorin, not yours!’ All of a sudden, Dís raised her voice. ‘You have nothing to say about what he must or mustn’t do! He cares about that girl, and he was so afraid of our reactions that he’s been keeping this from us for weeks! And with good reason, apparently! He’s _my_ son! And you – you’re way out of line!’ She got up and looked down to Thorin furiously. ‘Fíli is right,’ she concluded and she left Thorin and Bilbo alone.

Bilbo couldn’t believe what he had just witnessed. He felt like an intruder in this family, misplaced at this table.  
‘What, master Baggins?’ Thorin asked in a hostile tone.  
Bilbo cleared his throat, not knowing what he should say. But in the end, he knew he had to be honest: Thorin’s behaviour was abhorrent.   
‘Listen, Thorin, I know I have nothing to say about this and it’s none of my business and all that, but I know family-arguments. I’ve had my fair share of them, more than I’d like to, and I can tell you that most of them are about things absolutely not worth arguing about.’ He looked right into those blue eyes, those eyes that had him hypnotised and intrigued from day one, and that made it all the more difficult to say what he had to say. ‘Having a loving family is one of the most valuable things in this world. And if this is how you treat your family…’ He took a deep breath and forced himself to say the words. ‘If this is how you treat the people close to you, then I want nothing to do with you anymore, Thorin Oakenshield.’  
He didn’t look back when he walked onto the yard, afraid he would change his mind if he looked one more time in those damned eyes of his. He was half expecting, or hoping, to be stopped at the door, to hear that enchanting voice call his name, but it stayed silent and he closed the door behind him.

The yard was abandoned. When he reached the front of the house, he saw a light burning behind the kitchen window. He stopped for a moment and saw Fíli standing with his arm around Kíli, who in turn was holding Tauriel tightly. Dís just came walking into the kitchen with a big bag of fries in her hands and stroked through Kíli’s hair. They weren’t exactly looking happy, but at least that poor boy wasn’t alone, thought Bilbo.   
He turned his back to the house and walked to his car. It wasn’t easy to drive off the yard, because he knew he would never return.

\-----

‘I’m so sorry, Kíli!’  
‘It’s not your fault,’ he repeated. He pulled Tauriel closer, clung to her, and wondered if he would ever be able to release her. He felt ashamed for the tears in his eyes, but knew that she wouldn’t mind seeing him so vulnerable – not after the scene that had just played out.  
‘I never wanted anything like this to happen.’  
‘I know,’ Kíli said. ‘It’s not your fault.’  
‘I can’t believe it… Your mother… The way she was just sitting there…’ She leaned backwards a little bit and tenderly brushed her hand over his cheek. ‘You don’t have to do this for me.’  
‘I would be crazy if I didn’t,’ Kíli said, passionate.  
‘Should I leave?’  
He shook his head. He didn’t have a plan, but knew for a fact that he couldn’t let her leave right now. If he had to, he would stay outside right here until sunrise, together with her.  
The door opened and Fíli came outside. The look on his face was ferocious. ‘I can’t believe what a dick uncle Thorin is!’ he called out. Only when he came closer, he saw how upset his brother was and immediately, his rage changed into compassion. ‘Kíli, it’s gonna be fine, it’s – ‘  
‘It’s not gonna be fine, Fíli,’ he sneered at his brother. ‘Didn’t you hear him? Didn’t you see the look on mum’s face? How can you say it’s gonna be fine?’  
‘I can fix – ‘  
‘No, Fíli, this is something you cannot fix for me! Not this time.’ He pulled his hands through his hair, feeling desperate. ‘You probably knew that there would come a day when even you couldn’t get me out of trouble. This is that day. There’s nothing you can do. Not even you.’  
In a rough movement, Fíli pulled both Kíli and Tauriel towards him, in an embrace so tight that Kíli could barely breathe anymore.  
‘It’s outrageous,’ said Fíli after he let go of them. ‘The way he just…’  
Tauriel looked at him rather bewildered, obviously struck by that sudden loving gesture.  
A silence fell in which they all thought about what to do now but none of them knew an answer to that.

And then, Dís appeared from around the corner.  
‘Oh no,’ Kíli mumbled. Thorin had been frightening enough already, but his mother could be just as bad if she wanted to.  
She said nothing while taking big steps towards them – and them she hugged him.  
Kíli understood nothing of it.  
‘I made clear to Thorin that he’s out of line,’ she said to him. ‘I can hardly deny that I’d prefer seeing you with someone else – no offence, Tauriel – but no one, _no one_ , talks to my son like that.’  
‘Mum – ‘  
‘He had no right to… I love him because he’s my brother, but he’s such a stubborn, prejudiced, arrogant prick!’  
Beside him, Fíli started laughing, which sounded amazingly relieving.  
‘Tauriel, girl, I am so sorry that your first acquaintance with Kíli’s family had to play out like this. I’m sorry if I gave you a terrible first impression, but please let me make up for that.’  
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Tauriel quickly, modest as always.  
‘Bullshit, of course it does. It’s a debacle!’ Dís exclaimed. ‘I mean, of course I’d rather seen Kíli come home with someone less… less… _problematic_ , but I can clearly see that he cares about you and I would be crazy to try and come between that. When this boy knows he wants something… Come on, we can’t stand out here in the cold all evening. I don’t think we have that much food at home, but I’m sure we still have some fries left in the freezer.’  
Together with Fíli and Tauriel he followed his mother inside, to their own kitchen. He couldn’t believe that his mother stayed on his side so fanatically, that she spoke out for him so full of love, no matter the fact that she obviously wasn’t happy with his choice. He felt weak of relief – or maybe just of hunger.

Inside, he wrapped his arm around Tauriel, and on his other side Fíli pulled close to him, refusing to become the third wheel.  
While his mother turned the frying pan on, he heard an engine start. He looked out of the window and saw mister Baggins’ tiny red car leave the yard. The image of Thorin that formed in his mind, left all alone at his dinner table laid for six with a huge pan of food in front of him, should give him pleasure, but in reality it only made him feel sad.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It appears Thorin is suffering from the human version of dragon sickness, which leaves both Bilbo and Kíli broken-hearted.

Bilbo could not believe how wrong he had been about Thorin Oakenshield. He had always thought himself to be a good judge of character and had secretly been proud that he had been able to break through Thorin’s distant manners and ultimately had befriended him. It had been clear to him that Thorin cared a lot about his family, that he was still mourning the terrible loss he had suffered fifteen years later, and that he would do anything for his nephews, who always knew how to get to his softer side. The Thorin he thought he knew did in no way resemble the Thorin who sent his own nephew out his home and subsequently let the rest of his family turn his back on him. That stone-cold look in his eyes was impossible to unite with his usual passionate stares full of emotion.

‘It’s like there was a different person in front of me,’ Bilbo said when he told Bofur all about it.  
‘Have you spoken to Dís since?’  
Bilbo shook his head. ‘I’m not going there anymore. Of course I want to know how she and the boys are doing, but I have no business coming there anymore. That would be extremely inappropriate. I don’t think I ever want to see Thorin again.’ He sighed and stared at the mug in his hands. ‘I was just starting to allow myself to have feelings for him,’ he admitted. ‘I was starting to hope for… I don’t know. For something. Only the idea that maybe, something could grow between the two of us. But he turned out to be someone I want nothing to do with,’ he decided, resolute. ‘Was it naïve of me?’ he asked Bofur.  
‘What do you mean?’  
Bilbo shrugged. ‘The very first time I saw him, I already got a nasty vibe from him. He was rude, curt, coarse, distant… I could’ve known, couldn’t I?’  
Bofur thought about that for a moment. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself for that. You gave him a chance. That’s precisely what’s so laudable about you.’  
But Bilbo doubted if that was really that laudable; it changed nothing about the fact that he was alone once more and that he was feeling miserable right now.

He did the logical thing to do whenever he wanted to get certain thoughts out of his head: he buried himself in his work. That ought to help – it always helped, without exceptions. But this time it was different. It was almost like he was obsessed; no matter what he was reading about, every text reminded him of Thorin, one way or another: quarrels between gentry and citizens reminded him of the competition between Erebor and Mirkwood, relations between suzerains and vassals made him think of the fields around Erebor Farm, trade routes reminded him of the store in which he had had so many conversations with Thorin, arranged marriages transported his thoughts to Kíli and Tauriel… It was no use. It made him desperate. Even his biggest passion got defiled by the thought of this man. Sighing, he got up and paced up and down through his office. He had to do something else.

That way, he landed in the kitchen to distract himself by baking something. The last eggs that came from Erebor went through the dough and he cut up a part of the fresh apples for inside the pie. But even that satisfying feeling when a pie came out of the oven even more beautiful than it had gone in, couldn’t cheer Bilbo up right now.   
It felt like Thorin hadn’t just robbed him from his passion for history, but also from all his other hobbies. He seemed to be present in everything Bilbo was doing, no matter what it was. Even when he gave his home a big cleaning, he couldn’t get Thorin out of his mind: sorting out his clothes took him back to the day when he had put together the perfect outfit to be noticed by Thorin with Nori, the same day he had seen Thorin wearing something else than his overalls for the first time, but he shouldn’t be thinking about that… When he continued by vacuuming, he thought about that time when he had dropped all his fresh groceries in the mud and how glad he had been that Thorin didn’t witness that, although he could be pretty sure that his nephews had told him about their first encounter with mister “Boggins” by now.  
Just like that, the days slowly passed, empty and miserable and without the exciting prospect of making a drive to the countryside with some lame excuse.

\-----

Kíli was on his way to the storage with three full crates in his arms. Outside, he kept still when he heard mumbling voices through the crack in the door and thought he caught his own name. Slowly, without making any noise, he put the crates on the ground and pricked up his ears.  
‘…untenable. We live on the same terrain, Thorin.’  
‘What do you want me to do?’  
‘Apologize!’  
The voices sounded muffled, but not necessarily angry – they were two adults disagreeing on a certain situation.  
‘I’m not doing that.’  
‘The boy adores you. You’re like a father to him, you know that very well. This fight – not talking to each other for days – it’s breaking his heart.’  
‘It should.’  
Those words indeed broke Kíli’s heart.  
‘Listen, Thorin: you’re my brother and we run this farm together, and there’s a lot of things I accept from you: your rudeness, your bad temper, your arrogance, your tendency to push your own wants through in every shared decision we have to make, the way you always either give too much or too little water to the – ‘  
‘Your point, Dís?’ Thorin gruffly interrupted her.  
‘What? Oh, yes. My point is that I can accept all your bad habits –which there are a lot of – and that I can easily live with all those little annoyances, but that I can impossibly accept the way you’re treating my son at this moment. You of all people should know the feeling of someone judging whom you love for reasons that have nothing to do with yourself. I don’t see in which way you’re any better than the homophobic people who can make your life so difficult at times right now.’ She sighed and a silence fell. ‘We have already lost so much. We only have each other. And what you said to Kíli, the way you looked at him… It reminded me of grandpa.’  
Even Kíli, standing outside and not seeing their faces, could feel that the silence that followed was icy.  
‘Of grandpa,’ Thorin repeated at last.  
It surprised Kíli that he didn’t get furious at Dís. His mother was probably the only person who could say things like this to him.  
‘It is time that you’ll ask yourself what’s really important to you. That stupid honour-stuff because of Mirkwood – no, listen to me – I do understand that your honour is important to you, but you’re taking things too far now! This is at the cost of your bond with your nephew – with both your nephews, because wherever Kíli goes, Fíli goes too – and it’s also at the cost of your bond with me. And if that isn’t bad enough for you: do you really think that you’ll ever see Bilbo Baggins again around here as long as you keep behaving like this?’  
‘What on earth does Bilbo Baggins have to do with this?’  
‘You know that better than I do. Although I’m even starting to doubt that. The only thing I’m trying to say is that it becomes time that you start thinking about your attitude real good.’  
Some rumbling sounded and Kíli swiftly bowed to lift his crates again. When he walked into the storage, only Thorin was left. He put the crates down for him, avoided his gaze and walked back outside as quickly as he could. Both of them didn’t say a word to each other.

That evening, when Kíli was sitting with his brother and mother in the living room, they got interrupted from their game of _Guitar Hero_ by heavy footsteps in the hallway and a gust of wind when the door to the living room opened.  
Under loud protesting of the boys, Dís paused the game, and only then they noticed that their visitor was uncle Thorin.  
‘Kíli,’ said Thorin, even more solemn than usual. ‘I’ve been thinking long and hard, and I decided that I… That I overreacted.’  
Kíli didn’t know what he was hearing and next to him, Fíli was also listening with eyes like saucers and his mouth open. Uncle Thorin was the proudest person Kíli knew and he hadn’t held it possible that he would ever be able to swallow that pride.  
‘The arrival of that new farm has stricken me there where I’m most vulnerable. But you – both of you – should never have become the victim of that. To tell you the truth, I was afraid. That made me see that girl as a threat. But I didn’t have the right to judge you the way I did. I should never have done that.’  
Kíli hated seeing his uncle not being strong. ‘It doesn’t matter, uncle Thorin, I forgive you,’ he immediately said.  
In a few big steps, Thorin stood before the couch, where he pushed himself between Fíli and Kíli and wrapped Kíli into his strong arms, in an embrace where he had been feeling safe since he was a little boy.  
‘Uncle Thorin, you’re squashing me,’ Fíli’s muffled voice sounded at his right side. Kíli looked over Thorin’s shoulder and saw his mother pulling Fíli from beneath Thorin’s thick coat.  
‘And what about Bilbo?’ Fíli asked as soon as he could breathe again.  
Finally, Thorin released Kíli from his grip. ‘What about Bilbo?’ he asked.  
‘You like him, don’t you?’  
Thorin’s gaze went from Fíli to Dís and back to Fíli again. ‘Why does everyone think…’  
‘I think he’s cool,’ said Fíli without answering his unfinished question. ‘But I do think you can wait a very long time for him to come back again.’  
Thorin shook his head. ‘I suspect he’s already taken.’  
‘You _suspect_ it,’ Dís sharply repeated. ‘Then there’s only one way to find out for sure.’  
‘I don’t even know where I can find him,’ Thorin opposed.  
Something big and heavy flew through the room and hit Kíli right in his face when Thorin dodged it just in time.  
‘That’s what phone directories are for, idiot,’ Fíli said to his uncle.  
‘Yes, Fíli, they are _not_ for giving your little brothers concussions,’ Kíli uttered weakly.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thorin tries to fix the things he screwed up, and Kíli runs into a slightly traumatizing situation.

It was Saturday night and already rather late when the bell rang. Bilbo was already in his pyjamas, with his favourite colourful patchwork robe over it and big fluffy slippers on his feet. Surprised because he wasn’t expecting anyone, he walked towards the door, and when he opened it, he was standing face to face with no one else than Thorin Oakenshield.  
‘What are you doing here?’ was the first thing that escaped his lips, while he tried his very best to look angry instead of paying attention to how soft the wool of his thick coat was looking.  
‘May I come in?’ Thorin asked.  
Bilbo felt conflicted between doing what was polite and what was sensible. ‘Why are you here?’ he asked to buy himself some more time.  
‘I came to apologize for um… The whole situation. It must have been very uncomfortable for you to witness that.’  
‘That it was indeed. I already told you what I think of it, Thorin, and I’m not – ‘  
‘I was being a dick,’ Thorin interrupted him.  
Bilbo swallowed and knew nothing to say.  
‘I’ve invited Tauriel to have dinner with us again next weekend, and this time the right way. Kíli forgave me and I was hoping you could do the same.’  
Bilbo succumbed to that begging gaze and opened the door further for him, so that he could step into the hallway.  
‘It’s none of my business,’ said Bilbo. ‘That was something between you and your family.’  
‘But you were there too, which means you got dragged into it as well, whether you wanted or not. You suddenly didn’t come around anymore – and of course I can’t blame you for that – but I missed you. You had… become a good friend.’  
_A good friend._ Bilbo frowned. ‘So, just to be clear: you made the effort to trace my address, appear at my door unannounced, only to tell me that you came to some kind of insight that made you treat your nephew like a normal human being again?’  
For a long time, Thorin didn’t say anything and the two men only stared at each other.  
‘That changes nothing about the fact that you’ve treated your own family like trash,’ Bilbo said at last.  
‘So you cannot forgive me?’  
‘Like I said, it’s not up to me to forgive you, Thorin!’ said Bilbo, growing more and more frustrated. ‘If you only came for my forgiveness, you should leave.’  
‘I haven’t been entirely honest with you.’  
Bilbo waited for the rest of the story. Why couldn’t that man just say what he had to say, why must everything be told in riddles and beat about the bush?  
‘When I told you about the fire that killed my parents, grandfather, brother and brother-in-law…’ He paused and ran his hand through his black beard. ‘I didn’t tell you everything about that day. My grandfather… He wasn’t well. He hadn’t been for a while. He was very, very far away. At first, it were only moments, but those moments took longer and longer, and we were all worried, but we didn’t know what to do. At times, he could become very angry very suddenly. He was getting old and my father thought it time to convey the farm to him – we all thought that – but he felt threatened by it. A sickness had begun to grow within him – a sickness that drove him mad and finally made him…’ Thorin paused and didn’t look Bilbo in the eyes anymore. ‘I was standing below with him, the rest of them were on the hayloft above. I was the only one who saw what he did. I was the only one who saw how he brought out a box of matches and lit the whole place aflame. I think it had been his plan to wipe the competition away and escape himself. But maybe he meant to go down with Erebor, I don’t know. It stays a fact that had I acted quicker…’  
‘Thorin,’ Bilbo said in a soft voice. He felt cold, despite his thick robes. ‘This is a horrible story, but I don’t understand why you’re telling me this now.’  
Finally, Thorin looked into his eyes again. ‘Dís told me that I reminded her of my grandfather, that night with Kíli. My father could show his mannerisms as well at times. I suppose it’s in our genes. Anyway, when Dís told me that, it was like I woke up. It is in no way an excuse for the way I behaved, but it was indeed like someone else was overpowering me. Call it a sickness, call it insanity… It was the same fear for rivalry which made my grandfather paranoid and at last drove him to let the hay-shed burn, together with half his family.’  
Finally, Bilbo understood Thorin’s way of thinking and his gaze softened, just like his heart. ‘You are not your grandfather,’ he told him, and although he had never known that man, he meant it and knew it to be true.  
Thorin nodded, but still looked rather at loss, something Bilbo wasn’t used to from Thorin and which didn’t fit Thorin at all.  
‘It was important for me that you would know the whole truth,’ Thorin concluded. ‘Because… Because I care about you. And I understand that there is someone else, and that I wasted far too much time being rude because I just am not that friendly, but… I want you to know.’  
Bilbo was completely perplexed by those words. They only sunk in very slowly, as if his brain was working in slow-motion and Thorin was speaking a different language. ‘Someone else?’ he, at last, repeated in an asking tone.  
Thorin smiled grimly – he was probably he only person on earth able to do that, Bilbo thought. ‘I immediately noticed is when I saw you two – it doesn’t matter, I’m sure he makes you very happy.’  
‘What are you talking about?’  
‘That man in the store. Bofur, if I recall correctly.’  
If the tension between them hadn’t been so enormous, Bilbo would have burst into laughter.  
‘Bofur?!’ he exclaimed. ‘Bofur is married! To a woman! He’s my best friend!’  
Thorin only frowned. ‘He told me he was having a date with a man and the next time you two ran into each other and he spoke about love and winked at you when he told me how well his date had gone. I mean, there’s only so many gays in a village like Shire.’  
Now Bilbo couldn’t help but starting to laugh anyway; it was all too ludicrous for words. ‘That… That was… Thorin, nothing about that was true!’ Normally, he would have been too ashamed to admit it, but now he couldn’t care anymore. ‘He had noticed that I liked you and came up with that ridiculous story to find out whether you were into men! I thought I didn’t stand a chance, because you were so tough-looking and, well, manly.’  
Thorin stared at him like he had just grown a third eye. ‘You liked me? Back then already?’  
Bilbo nodded and wondered when Thorin had come so close; so close that he could distinguish the wrinkles around his eyes and the few grey hairs in his beard were at eye-level for him. His heart was racing like it had to beat all beats of the rest of his life in the next minute. But before he could no longer restrain himself, he set a step backwards, because there were still some things that made no sense to him. ‘What exactly is Dwalin of you?’ he asked, his voice trembling.  
Now it was Thorin’s turn to burst out laughing. ‘You found _me_ too tough-looking and manly to be into men, but you thought that _Dwalin_ …?’  
‘So he isn’t?’  
‘Bilbo.’ The way Thorin pronounced his name made him shiver. ‘Dwalin has been a good friend of our family for years. I would never look at him that way. Never.’ In a smooth, confident movement, he pulled Bilbo towards him and without hesitation pressed his lips on Bilbo’s.

\-----

Kíli had a hard time fighting back his laughter when uncle Thorin shook Tauriel’s hand and Fíli made a weird face to his brother over his shoulder.  
‘Welcome,’ Thorin said to Tauriel on a tone which normal people would only use when they wanted to murder someone, but Tauriel wasn’t scared off easily and gave him a friendly smile.  
‘Sit down everyone, dinner is ready,’ Dís commanded while she took the last pan off the stove. ‘Tauriel, do you want a hamburger or bacon?’  
‘I’m vegan,’ Tauriel answered and the silence that followed was very uncomfortable.  
Kíli almost didn’t dare to look in his uncle’s direction, who was sitting at the head of the table and crossed his arms.  
‘Okay, um… That’s no problem,’ Dís quickly said. ‘I can bake you an egg, that’s done in a – ‘  
‘Mum, she’s _vegan_ ,’ Fíli interrupted her.  
‘That means she only eats lettuce,’ Thorin translated.  
‘Sorry,’ Tauriel said with an apologetic expression. ‘I thought that…’  
‘No, you don’t have to apologize,’ said Dís, as hospitable as she could. ‘Pick a spot, I cooked potatoes and we have a lot of spinach, we can’t go wrong with that, can we?’  
‘That’s lovely, it looks delicious,’ Tauriel said, sounding a little nervous.  
Kíli took a relieved breath. He had totally forgotten to mention Tauriel’s diet, of course, but although his uncle was clearly annoyed by it, it didn’t ruin the entire ambience.  
Tauriel got herself a spot at the other side of the table, as far from Thorin as possible, and Kíli took the chair between her and Bilbo.  
Dinner went by in a mood Kíli wasn’t used to of his family: the usually relaxed spontaneity had made place for a forced effort by everyone to be as polite as possible and some very uncomfortable silences fell. Luckily, Bilbo was with them, who turned out to be very good at filling all those silences by asking Tauriel about where she and her brother had previously lived, or by asking the boys about their subjects in school and their plans for the next vacation.  
‘Have you already visited Tauriel’s family?’ he asked Kíli when the end of meal was near and another silence fell.  
Kíli, who had just stuffed himself with a last big mouthful of potato, shook his head. ‘Her foster father doesn’t know about it yet,’ he managed to get out while trying to swallow at the same time.  
‘My brother does know, he doesn’t really mind,’ Tauriel added. ‘But Thranduil is a lot less relaxed. I don’t think he’ll be too pleased about it. I’m not that close with him, so I don’t really see any reason to tell him about Kíli. It would only complicate everything. I’m just happy that it isn’t too complicated anymore.’  
Bilbo nodded, understanding, and Dís even seemed to show some empathy.  
‘Do you all want a dessert?’ Dís asked when she saw that also Kíli was finally done eating.  
‘No, thanks,’ said Thorin while Fíli and Kíli nodded enthusiastically. ‘Bilbo and me are having some beers, I’ll see you guys tomorrow on the land.’  
‘Beers, really?’ Dís repeated with a suggestive grin on her face. Fíli wiggled his eyebrows in Kíli’s direction.  
‘There’s a documentary on tv about the ancient Azteks that I very much like to see,’ Bilbo quickly told and Kíli had to put a lot of effort into not laughing at that.

In the hours after Thorin had disappeared with Bilbo, the tension lessened rapidly. There was more laughing and until late in the evening the four of them stayed at the table with drinks and a lot of crisps.  
‘Have you ever played _Quest to Mordor_?’ asked Fíli Tauriel full of enthusiasm on a certain moment.  
She shook her head.  
‘Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of _Quest to Mordor_!’ Fíli exclaimed, shocked.  
‘I’m sorry,’ Tauriel said, half-laughing.  
‘We have to play it right now!’  
Kíli completely agreed with him on that.  
‘Kíli, get uncle Thorin and Bilbo, we can’t play it without uncle Thorin! Tauriel, prepare yourself for the best board game ever made.’  
In this case, Kíli gladly let his older brother boss him around and on his slippers he walked the few meters around the house to find uncle Thorin. He saw a light burning and imagined the two men sitting comfortably together by the hearth.   
However, when he opened the door to step inside the living room, he became witness of something he’d rather not seen: Bilbo was sitting in Thorin’s lap and the men had their arms wrapped tightly around each other while being absorbed in a hungry make-out session.  
‘Gross!’ Kíli called out, after which they let go of each other like they were being electrocuted and Bilbo rather sheepishly slid off Thorin’s lap. His neat dress shirt was all wrinkled and halfway buttoned open.  
‘I did not want to see that!’  
‘Then maybe you should’ve knocked first,’ Thorin said rather dryly.  
‘You said that you… A documentary…’ Kíli stuttered.  
Thorin burst into a loud, barking laugh. ‘And here I was thinking _you_ were the “Netflix  & chill” generation!’  
Kíli felt his cheeks burn. ‘I um… I was going to ask if you’d wanna join us playing _Quest to Mordor_. But I suppose the answer is no,’ he concluded with a rather helpless gesture to the situation on the couch.  
Bilbo grinned awkwardly.  
‘Maybe another time,’ Thorin said, unusually cheerful.


	16. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few months later and from Fíli's point of view, to make sure everyone lives happily ever after! (and with a nice surprise for the Barduil shippers among us because I want all my ships to sail in this fic)

‘Oh no, there they go again.’  
‘It’s disgusting.’  
‘Do they really not notice how repulsive they’re being?’  
‘Maybe we should have a good make-out session as well, then they’ll understand how horrible it is to witness.’  
Fíli burst into laughter upon Legolas’ remark.  
Since Kíli and Tauriel were spending pretty much every minute of every day together, Fíli and Legolas had more than enough time to complain together about how terrible their brother and sister were. Their mutual disgust for their relationship had created a bond and the more the four of them hung out together, the more Fíli had begun to realize that Legolas was actually a quite nice guy. Not that Fíli would ever admit that, of course. That wasn’t really necessary anyway; the fact that he was sharing a tent with Legolas on the campsite where they spent their summer vacation, was already saying enough.  
After some months, it had turned out that Erebor had indeed been able to survive by offering a bigger assortment and using better commercials. They still had a lot less to spend than before and uncle Thorin still had no good word to say about Thranduil Greenleaf, but they could get by, and since Bilbo had moved in with Thorin their income had become a little more secure.  
Therefore, a vacation with the four of them was something they had definitely deserved after those turbulent months. At their big surprise, even Thranduil had agreed on it. By the time he got informed by the relationship between his foster daughter and his enemy’s son, he himself had met a man from Laketown and had become far too happy to worry about the friendships of his children. Legolas had told Fíli in great detail how weird it was to see his father with a man, but he said that he, above all, was glad for Thranduil’s happiness, after so many years of grieving his deceased wife, and that Bard had turned out to be a really good influence on him.

‘By the way: there was a postcard for you and Kíli at the reception,’ Legolas said to Fíli to distract both of them from the saliva-exchange that was happening only a few meters away from their campfire.  
Fíli took the card from him, which had a picture of some decayed old ruin on the front.

_Greetings from Egypt!_  
_Bilbo wants me to write down that it’s absolutely fantastic here. But actually, that’s not true: it’s terribly hot and I thought we would be seeing real pyramids, but instead we’re only looking at unrecognizable piles of decayed stone. Luckily, at least Bilbo likes it; I’m happy I finally got that man out of his books and into the real world._  
_We wish you a very good holiday as well. Don’t drink too much and make sure those two vegans won’t stop you from eating enough meat._  
_Bye,_  
_Thorin & Bilbo_

With a smile, Fíli shook his head. Beneath his uncle’s annoyed tone, it was clear that he was happy to be spending his holiday with Bilbo.  
His gaze wandered to the other happy couple for a moment, and he wondered if he shouldn’t be feeling more lonely since he himself still had a total absence of love life. But he didn’t give it that much thought. He had the farm, which he had only begun to love more now that he had learned herding sheep. He still had his hands full with his little brother every now and then, who hadn’t quite broken his habit of getting into trouble. And he had his friends, on whom he could always count and who never caused complicated plots like being in love did. With that, he had all the things he needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE END
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this, I know the ending is a bit cheesy but I actually love cheesy stories so I can't really help it!  
> And no, I didn't forget about Ori (he would join the others on holiday but Dori is a strict old man so he wasn't allowed to go so instead he's making some money by helping Dís run the farm. I'm sure he's enjoying his summer anyway!)
> 
> Please let me know what you thought about it, every bit of honest feedback is very much appreciated :) And thank you so much for spending your time reading this, it always means a lot to me!


End file.
